A CHAIR TRANSFORMED

When I first started my custom home furnishings business in Chicago in 1991, I did mainly window treatments and bedding.  People kept asking if I did slipcovers and it finally occurred to me that I should maybe learn to do them.  At the time, I had no furniture that could be slipcovered.  At least that's what I thought then.  Now I know that practically anything can be slipcovered.  In any case, I didn't own anything that seemed appropriate, so I went to Betty's Resale Shop and came home with this ugly chair.  It only cost me $12.  Now this chair wasn't what I was picturing as the type I wanted.  I was working in a fabric store at the time and we had this big, puffy, over-sized chair and that's what I wanted.  As you can see from the picture, this chair wasn't that at all.  So I decided to cover it with batting, in an attempt to make it puffier, and because you can't just have batting under a slipcover, I had to upholster it.

Keep in mind that I had no clue how to slipcover anything, let alone re-upholster it.  I have to say that I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  Although the chair looked pretty good in its 'naked' state, it really couldn't be without a slipcover because I sewed the arm fronts and other parts of the chair by hand.

I must have taken the skirt off because it is obviously not tucked up under the new upholstery.  I decided then that upholstery was not my calling.

Although the chair was no longer as sleek and clean (and I use these terms lightly) as it started out, it still wasn't the chair I wanted it to be.  I also learned then that if you want a puffy, over-sized chair, you had better start with a puffy, over-sized chair.  There really is only so much one can do to change a chair's overall appearance.  

And that's where a slipcover comes in.  The finished chair looks nothing like the original.  I think I said in one of my first posts back in December that by the time I actually got to this chair, I had already done 2 benches (my first slipcovers for $), a sofa, an ottoman and 2 chairs.  I always was partial to this chair, though it wasn't so comfortable.  The cats loved it and made it their own, which was fine with me.  I've yet to get that big, puffy, over-sized chair I was trying to create.