Butterfly chairs are back in vogue again. I saw lots of them at Maison et Objets in Paris. They were covered in a variety of fabrics and skins including leather and pony skin. I bought this old butterfly chair in a junk shop for £10. The cover was rust stained and not very nice so I decided to give it a revamp.
You will need
3 metres of white cotton drill
Dylon goldfish orange machine dye
Dylon Tulip Red machine dye
Dress making scissors
Sewing machine
Thread
Pen
15mm bias binding
Instructions
- Cut the fabric in half and using the instructions on the pot, dye half the fabric red and half orange.
- Draw round the old cover to make a pattern and don’t forget to add the seam allowance
- Cut out the pieces and sew the pieces first in one colour and then in the next together as in the original pattern.
- The only difficult part is pinning and stretching the seat top to the seat bottom as you are joining a concave piece of fabric to a convex piece. With right sides facing, pin the top of the seat to the bottom at the center seam. Sew from the center of the seat outwards stretching as you sew. This way the two pieces will fit together. Repeat this step to join the other half of the chair top to the chair bottom.
- The pockets for the front and back of the seam are neatened at their bases and then sewn with raw edges onto the cover. This is repeated for the reverse of the seat.
- Once the pockets are in place, with wrong sides facing, sew the seat top to the seat bottom round the edge and then hide all the raw edges with bias binding.
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