How to Recover a Butterfly Chair
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Do you have a butterfly chair that is sun-faded or has hideous fabric on it? I bet you thought it was a lost cause, right? Nope! With a sewing machine, some new fabric and a little spare time you can recover that ugly butterfly chair and have a new one. Okay, so I didn’t recover it with green fabric in honor of St. Patrick, but what could be greener than a good old upcycling project! Believe it or not, this was a much easier project than I had anticipated, so don’t get scared by the curves. You can “sew” do this! 😉
I stumbled upon this chair at Goodwill for $9.99. Normally I wouldn’t spend this much for a sun-faded chair, but because I was working on the school library makeover project — and we needed more comfortable seating — I bought it. After all, we would have had to pay at least double for another comfy chair.
Luckily, I had some soft leftover fleece fabric that I could use to recover the chair. I wish I had measured how much I used, I think it was a little less than 2 yards.
Materials:
- 2 yards of fabric
- Coordinating thread
- Pins
- Scissors
- Old butterfly chair + old cover
Instructions:
1. Remove the old cover from the butterfly chair frame. Lay it on top of your fabric (both right sides up.)
2. Fold the chair at the seat seam. Cut around the seat adding a 1 inch seam allowance around all four sides.
Flip the cover over and now cut around the back portion, again leaving a 1 inch seam allowance around all four sides. Your two pieces should look something like this. (Minus the ghostly hand prints. LOL.)
3. Pin the back and seat pieces right sides together along the seat seam only.
4. Sew along this seam to attach the two pieces. Open them up, and your fabric should resemble this:
5. Line up the seam you just stitched in your fabric with the seam on the old cover. Make sure to center your fabris so you have equal amounts extending off the old cover on either side. Pin the fabric to the old cover.
6. Stitch in the ditch (directly over your seam) to secure the fabric to the old cover.
7. Working from the seat seam you just sewed, fold under the edges of your fabric and pin it to the cover (hiding the old cover fabric, but allowing the binding edge to show.)
Continue around the edge until you have pinned one half of the chair ending back at the center seam.
8. Stitch as close as you can to the edge of the new fabric where it meets the binding.
9. Now pin the other half of the chair and sew it to the old cover as you did in the previous step.
Trim all the threads and put it back onto the butterfly frame. You are done!!! You can find my tutorial for sewing that cute little star pillow here. It’s an oldie but a goodie!
No one will ever know that was an ugly sun-faded chair. It looks brand new. For extra bling, you could spray paint the frame before putting the cover back on.
Now you will never overlook a perfectly good butterfly chair that might need a little upcycling!
Don’t forget to enter to win 2 Savvy Rest Latex Pillows! The giveaway ends this Saturday!
Pin for later!
Thanks for the idea, i’m going to mention your website in my blog!
I think I have one of these chairs in my shed. Maybe I will refurbish it and gift it to my daughter as it was her chair when she was a teen! Thanks for the inspiration!
That is quite an incredible makeover of that chair Brittany. I never would have thought of that & it looks so cozy & soft! Nice job!
I wonder if Eli would like a butterfly chair in his new room??? I will be on the look out for a used one.
You are “sew” clever (to use your own pun back atchya!)
What a fantastic idea!! I would love to partner up with you and share with you some of the projects I have going on over at http://www.fridayisthatyou.blogspot.com. Please email me at [email protected] if you would be interested! Thanks for the consideration!