At this time of year the emphasis can very much be on the dining table; the colour of the table cloth, the size of the place-mats, the font you use to write the name cards, it goes on… but what about the chairs?

They are equally as important as the table and often overlooked in the rush to get everything else just perfect. With this in mind I decided to dress my humble wooden dining room chairs up a bit.

Way back in June of this year I stumbled across some beautiful pink and green taffeta fabric in a local fabric shop. It was sitting in the remnant bin and I turned to Jodie, my fabric partner in crime, and declared that in 6 months time these raggedy pieces would be used at my Christmas table. The business was re-locating to another premises at the time so I was able to pick the fabric up for a song. Lucky me.

I have a love/hate relationship with taffeta. I love the way it looks and the way it can be manipulated into pretty much any shape, but I hate having to pin it as it’s almost slippery between the fingers! Grrrrr.

This is how I made them.

• You will need a sewing machine for this project as there is A LOT of sewing to be done.
• Start by measuring the width of the chair backs you wish to cover
• As I wanted to created a double bow effect, using the pink fabric for the larger bow and the green fabric for the smaller bow, I needed to think in terms of two bows for each chair
• The width of my chair backs measured 38cm, so in order to wrap the fabric all the way around the back of the chair and then tie into a substantial bow, I calculated that the length of my pink tie would have to be 220cm in length and 50cm in width.

Tip: A good way of measuring how much material you will need for each tie/bow is to tie a piece of string around the back of the chair you are covering and then securing the string into bow; when you are happy with the size of the string bow, un-tie it and use it as a guide to measure the length of your fabric.

• I have six dining chairs which I needed to cover so I cut six pieces of pink fabric all measuring 220cm x 50cm and then double hemmed them all.
• The reason for double hemming the fabric is because you want the ties to look as neat as possible when they are on the chairs, and taffeta frays very easily; by double hemming you will avoid any stray bits of fabric poking their way through!
• Once all the pink fabric tie-backs are hemmed and machined, tie them onto the chair backs in bows, making sure you twist and tease the bows into shape – taffeta is great for this.

• The fabric for the green ties will not need to be cut as long as the fabric used for the pink ties, this is because the green bow is tied to the middle of the pink bow and not to the chair back itself.
• The size of the green ties I made measured 100cm in length and 25cm in width.
• When I had cut, pinned and hemmed the green ties, I then tied them onto the middle of the pink ties in a bow.

Et voila!

You’ll see so many pictures of my dining room in the run up to Christmas so I wont bore you now with an album full of chair backs. But I will say that this is ever such a nice and simple way to give the chairs something else to do over the festive period. Not only have they made themselves available to sit on but they now look pretty.

See?

They are multitasking for you.

We like that!

See you tomorrow!
Cx

*************************************************

Join my Facebook page!

Cherry Menlove

Promote your Page too

Feel free to add me to your links list. Here it is ! - http://www.cherrymenlove.com/

Facebook – Please feel free to join my page

Twitter – please feel free to follow me

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Related posts:

1. My Christmas Chair
2. How To Make Simple Kitchen Curtains
3. How To Make A Stocking Advent
4. How To Make A Christmas Cranberry Garland
5. How to Make a Giant Patchwork Cushion

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.