how to recover an office chair (v.2.0) by baxter and duk duk

dear diary,

through no fault of my own, my dad’s office chair went kablooey beyond repair, and, because the shopping gods offered a chair better suited for her, she gave my dad her old chair and we covered the one she found in girly stuff,  which is why our updated instructions on how to cover an office chair do not include images of a chair being covered in ferocious fabric with flames and falcons and wolves on it, and rather shows one being covered in sleek shiny smooth velvets, some of which we dyed long ago.   anyhow, we still thought it might be nice to post instructions to maybe help inspire others, keeping in mind that every chair is different and comes with its own challenges. but the gist is basically the same, especially the last step which is very, extremely, super very important. anyhoo, if u do end up recovering an office chair please do send me a picture or tag me, wontchoo?

i hope u have a wonderful weekend!

toodleydoo!

b. :) 

HOW TO RECOVER AN OFFICE CHAIR - instructions by baxter and duk duk :) 

1) FIND A CHAIR. goto the surplus or thrifty store and find an office chair, making sure the pneumatics and seat adjustments work. my mom found this one for dos dólares. 

2) REMOVE CUSHIONS. remove cushions from the seat. every chair is different so you have to put on your thinking cap. sometimes there will be screws to remove. sometimes, it just requires a long screw driver - this chair has a hard plastic back so all we had to do was carefully ease the cushions out from their fasteners. it did have screws on the underside of the seat but after we removed them we found out the screws only kept the plastic cover in place.  by the way the plastic fasteners were old and brittle so in the process of removing the cushion there was some breakage, but not enough to keep us from refastening the cushions later. had everything broken i guess we would have jiggered something up to reassemble everything, probably using screws and screwing them i to the cushions from the back of the chair. 

3) APPLY FABRIC. make a scrap fabric pattern of the seat and back cushion, noting the center points on the cushion backs and patterns so everything can be lined back up again. use the pattern to cut your seat fabric, then serge or zigzag stitch the edges. run fishing line through the serged / zigzagged edg all around the pattern. pull the seat fabric on to the cushions like a shower cap, making sure all the center points are pinned and aligned. adjust fabric as needed, smoothing excess out from the center of the cushion out and over the edges. inset pins to secure fabric. if you have removed the original fabric,  staple, or (if you kept the original fabric on the cushions you can either staple or ) hand sew fabric using a curved needle , using normal upholstery methods - for example, always start  at the center of a side and work out toward the corner, when finished one side, work the opposite side, starting at the center and making sure fabric remains taut. sew or staple corners last, making sure to smooth from the top side toward the back, to minimize pleat visibility. 

4) REATTACH cushions to seat base. make sure to follow the next step … 

5) put a ferocious wolf on it and enjoy. :)