How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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! 😉

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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.)

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

2. Fold the chair at the seat seam. Cut around the seat adding a 1 inch seam allowance around all four sides.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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.)

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

3. Pin the back and seat pieces right sides together along the seat seam only.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

4. Sew along this seam to attach the two pieces. Open them up, and your fabric should resemble this:

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

6. Stitch in the ditch (directly over your seam) to secure the fabric to the old cover.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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.)

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

Continue around the edge until you have pinned one half of the chair ending back at the center seam.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

8. Stitch as close as you can to the edge of the new fabric where it meets the binding.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

9. Now pin the other half of the chair and sew it to the old cover as you did in the previous step.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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!

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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.

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair | Pretty Handy Girl

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!

PHGFancySign

 

Pin for later!

How to Recover a Butterfly Chair

6 replies
  1. Feral Turtle
    Feral Turtle says:

    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!

    Reply
  2. Leen
    Leen says:

    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!)

    Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] Butterfly chair cover or for the creative type, we found some great DIY tutorials here from Pretty Handy Girl & Melissa Esplin to make your […]

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.