Parsons Chair Slip Cover Tutorial-Part 1 Pinfitting

Parsons chairs are one of the easier pieces of furniture to slipcover.  They aren't very big and they have no arms or cushions to worry about.  So if you've been wanting to learn to make your own slipcovers, this is the perfect beginner project.

I'll be covering 2 identical Parsons chairs that were picked up at a Goodwill for $5.00 each.

The fabric on them is WAY outdated and they are a little worn, but I don't see all that.  What I see are 2 chairs that are perfect for slip covering.  The fact that they are white is a huge plus because then I don't have to worry about the original upholstery showing through the new fabric.  These would have been perfect to slipcover in white, but I chose a light blue stripe.

Parsons chairs take 4 yards of fabric each.  It doesn't matter the size or shape of your Parsons chair, it will take 4 yards.  I know it sounds like a lot of fabric for such a small chair, but the skirts take 2 yards alone.  If your Parsons chair has decorative legs that you plan on showing with a short skirt, then you can get by with 2 1/2-3 yards.

Before you start, you need to decide if you will be dry cleaning your slipcovers or machine washing them.  With a teenage son and 4 cats, I always opt to machine wash mine.  If you decide on machine washing them then you need to pre-shrink your fabric ahead of time.  

Pre-shrinking should be done with no more than 5 yards at a time.  I measure 5 yards off the roll of fabric, cut it off the roll and serge the cut edges so it doesn't fray real bad in the washer.  If you don't have a serger, it's ok, just zig zag across the cut ends.  Wash your fabric with the same laundry soap, water temp and drying temp that you will be washing your finished slipcovers in.  You want to get all the shrinkage out now.

Make sure you take your fabric out of the dryer the minute it's done, you don't want wrinkles to set in.

Step 1.  Blocking

The first step in pin fitting a slipcover is blocking the fabric to the chair.  Always leave a few extra inches when blocking.  You don't know how many times I thought I was leaving plenty of fabric to later discover it was barely enough.

Blocking is done by pinning your fabric to the different sections of your chair and then cutting them out leaving extra inches to go back and pin tightly to the chair later.  Use T pins for blocking.  They hold the fabric securely to the chair and won't allow your fabric to shift on you.

I always block the back first.  Since my fabric is a stripe, I found the center of the back of my chair and lined up one of my stripes there.  Make sure you keep the fabric straight, you don't want it to get tilted on you.

As you can see by the picture above, I used 3 T pins at the top, 1 on each side and 1 at each bottom corner. You can use more T pins if you want, but I wouldn't use less.

My stripe fabric made it easy for me to trim my fabric straight a few inches from the chair side edge.

 Then I trimmed it approx 2 inches below where the skirt will attach....remember always leave plenty of extra fabric.

Now that you have the back blocked, lets block the front of the chair the same way.  I matched up my stripe at the top to ensure it would align with the stripes on the back.

Before you trim your front piece, I need to tell you about "tuck ins".  Tuck ins on furniture are those deep crevices where you find change and crumbs and god only knows what.  Parsons chairs have a "tuck in" where the front meets the seat.  It's usually 2-3 inches deep.  Some slipcover professionals ignore the "tuck ins", I choose not to.  "Tuck ins" are the perfect place to form a pocket like area and this pocket gets shoved down in the crevice.  It helps to keep the slipcover from shifting around on your furniture.  If you've ever bought a ready made slipcover and it wouldn't stay in place on your furniture, I can almost guarantee it didn't have these "tuck in pockets".

  So I'm gonna show you how to do a tuck in pocket.

Because of the shape and style of my Parsons chairs, my front fabric piece will wrap around and cover the sides.  So before trimming my front sides, I had to wrap the fabric to the sides and then trim a few inches away.  

I'm leaving about 3 1/2 inches at the bottom of my front because that is where we are going to make our "tuck in pocket".

To block the seat, lift up the pocket from seat area and pin it up out of the way for now.  Lay your fabric on the seat and fold 3 1/2" up at the pocket area.  Remember to keep your fabric straight.  Put a T pin in each corner and center front and back.

I measured my boxing, that's the part that is right under the seat, and cut 2 pieces that were 2 1/2" taller then my boxing.  1 piece will not be enough to go around 3 sides of the seat.  I pattern matched my stripes and pinned them together leaving 1/2 seam allowance to make one long strip for the boxing.  T pin this to your boxing.  The boxing usually does not wrap around to the back side, just the front and two sides.

Step 2.  Pinning
Now that you have all your parts of the chair blocked (except the skirt area) it's time to pin it to fit around the curves and corners of your chair.  I use old style silver pins that are not too long.  I start with the upper back of the chair.  Starting in the center top, pin close to the chair edge the back to the front.  I made sure my stripes were lining up perfectly.  Since my Parsons chair has rounded corners at the top, I pinned the straight areas first and went back at the end and pinned in pleats/darts to neatly follow the curve of my chair.

The next area you need to pin is the "tuck in" pocket.   Pin the extra fabric at the bottom of the front and the back of the seat together to form a pocket.  Make sure both fabric pieces are sitting down in that crease and then line them up together and pin about 3" from the crease.

As you pin outward towards each side, you need to pin diagonally back to the chair crease.  When you get to the crease with your pins, pin as close to the crease as possible.  Make sure you head towards the crease a few inches before the side edge of the chair.  Structurally there are wood posts behind this area and so the "tuck in" crevice ends 2-3 inches before the side of the seat.  By pinning at the crease here, it will allow your fabric to go around these posts when you tuck the pocket into the "tuck in" area.
Trim your fabric 1/2" away from your pins along the diagonal pinning.  then 1/2" from the crease.  But don't trim too far yet!  Take small cuts until you have this whole area pinned.  Notice I did not trim into the fabric that needs to wrap around to the sides.  In order to release the fabric to wrap around to the side of my chair, I had to cut slits UP TO but NOT past the pins.   Make the first slit at the corner where the fabric needs to turn the corner.

 Continue cutting slits into the front back at the crease until you get the fabric to release and make the turns to the back .

You can put this area on pause for a minute while you go back and trim the pocket.  Trim along the pocket edge, through both layers 1/2" away from pins.

Pin the back chair piece to the front chair piece along the side edges.  Stop right before the boxing.  Now pin the boxing to the seat.  Make sure your pins run along the very edge of the seat.  Try to keep them straight and even.

The area where the seat, front, back and boxing all meet at the bottom of the side edge is probably going to be the hardest part of pin fitting this chair.  It's not really hard, I just want you to know that once you get past this next step, it's all down hill from there.
This is what this area will kind of look like at this point.

Pin the upper side to the boxing.  Pin the boxing to the back.  Keep in mind that what and where you pin together fabric is where the seam will be.
Now back to my curves at the top front.  I pinned in pleats/darts.  I pinned mine several different times trying to figure out how many pleats/darts and exactly where they should be to give the smoothest look.
I ended up with 3 pleats/darts at each curved corner.

Step 3.  Trimming
Trim everything 1/2" from your pins.  This gives you a perfect 1/2" seam allowance to sew by.  Start with the upper part of your chair and work your way down.  When you get to an area that has intersecting seams, just make sure you trim those 1/2" from your pins too.

Step 4.  Notches
Once you unpin your fabric from your chair, the pieces might look foreign to you and you won't remember exactly how each of them lines up.  Never fear...notches will guide the way!  Make small notches along every seam.  When it comes time to sew, you will just need to match up the notches and you know you will be sewing things correctly.  I like to think of notches making it like puzzle pieces.  You might later think 2 pieces go together a certain way, but if the notches don't line up then it doesn't fit together that way.  Just make sure your notches aren't so big that they go beyond the seam allowance.

Step 5.  Trimming the bottom for the skirt.
I usually attach my skirt somewhere in the close vicinity of where the boxing meets the legs.  You can put yours slightly higher of lower if you want.  When you decide where your skirt will go, put a pin there.  Now measure up from the floor to this pin.  Tip-if this chair is going to sit on carpet, then measure it on carpet.  If this chair is going to be on a hard floor, then measure it on a hard floor.
Using a pencil, mark all around your chair 1/2" less then the skirt height.  My skirt length is going to be 14", so I marked 13 1/2" up from the floor all around my slipcover.

Once you have made marks all around the chair, join these marks to make your cutting line.

Cut the excess off along this line.  No need to notch this bottom edge.


Congrats!  You have just pin fit your first chair slipcover!!  It wasn't that hard was it?!


Follow me and stay tuned for the Part 2:   How to sew a Parsons Chair Slipcover

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Pottery Barn Inspired Coral Pillow

I don't know about you, but I just love all the Coral and Shell decor that I've seen in all the catalogs lately!

The minute I saw this one in Pottery Barns catalog, I knew I wanted to try to make one.

 Pottery Barn

I love the texture, the color and the small mitered flange that outlines it like a picture frame.

I had to think about it for a few days to come up with how I wanted to add the texture to my pillow.  Then I came across this fabric at JoAnns in the clearance section.

It's a micro fiber suede.  It was on clearance for $9.00 a yard and I had a 40% off coupon.  Doesn't get better than that!

My drawing skills are pretty good, but my 15 year old sons are even better!  I used a large piece of paper and drew a large square the size I wanted my pillow to finish at...20".  I showed my son the picture of the pillow in Pottery Barn's catalog and asked if he could draw me some coral like that.  He divided my 20" square into 4 squares to help him get the scale right.  It took him about an hour and this is how it turned out.

I knew the micro fiber suede would not fray too much and so I decided to use an iron on adhesive.  As you can see, I got this one at my local thrift store for a whole .25 cents.

The HeatnBond is see through enough that I was able to lay it on top of the drawing my son made and trace the coral shapes onto the paper side of the HeatnBond.

Following the manufacturers directions I ironed the HeatnBond onto the back side of my fabric.

 After cutting out all the coral shapes with a sharp pair of scissors I peeled off the paper backing.

Using the original drawing my son made, I carefully placed all the coral pieces on a piece of off white fabric that I cut 21x21 inches square.  I used a few pins here and there to keep it from shifting as I ironed it to the pillow fabric.

Once the coral was set on the front of my pillow fabric I finished constructing the pillow like this:

So as I already said, I cut my pillow front 1" bigger than the finished size (20"), I cut it 21x21".  But since we're adding a 1/2 inch mitered flange to frame out the pillow, we can not do the zipper at the very bottom of the pillow.  The zipper will land slightly above the mitered flange at the bottom of the back of the pillow.  Cut your back 21x21" (the same size as the front)  Then cut another piece 21x2".  

You can use a store bought zipper, but I always use zipper by the yard, so my instructions will be using zipper by the yard.  And since I'm using zipper by the yard, I will need 2 zipper stops.  I make them out of fabric so I'm never stitching across the zipper teeth with my sewing machine needle (which will dull the needle)

My zipper stops are about 2 1/2" long by about 1" wide.

Here's what my zipper components look like:

Fold under 1/2" on one of the zipper stop and lay it on your zipper end by 1/2".  Stitch right next to both sides of the zipper teeth.

Leave the other end of the zipper free for now.

Place the long edge of the small back piece right side down on the zipper aligning it with the edge of the zipper tape.  

Stitch close to the zipper teeth.  Pause 3-4 inches from the end.  Fold under 1/2" on remaining zipper stop and line it's raw edge up with the pillow end.  Cut the zipper off allowing 1/2" to go past folded end of zipper stop.

Slip the zipper stop under the pillow back piece against zipper and finish stitching to the end.  When you open it up, it should look like this.

Add your zipper slide to the zipper.  

Now once you have your slide on your zipper, slide it down to the center of the zipper.

Place the other back pillow piece along the other side aligning it with the zipper tape.  Stitch close to the zipper teeth.

Lay it out flat right side up and then fold the fabric over the teeth of the zipper to form an overlapped zipper.  Your fold should just go slightly beyond the zipper teeth, just enough to cover the zipper teeth.

Line the right side of your zipper foot up with the left side of the zipper teeth and stitch.

With wrong sides together, lay your pillow front on top of your pillow back, lining up the edges.  The top edge on your back piece may be a little bigger.  Trim the excess off.  

Cut 2" wide strips of your coral fabric to use as the mitered flange frame.  I cut 2 of these the width of my fabric x 2".

Lay one strip face down on the front of your pillow extending the strip past the starting pillow edge.  Start stitching 1/2" from the beginning corner using a 1/2" seam allowance.

Stitch to the end stopping 1/2" from the corner.  Back stitch and remove from the machine.

Using a clear ruler, make small marks on the strip at 1/2", 1", and 1 1/2".

Hopefully your clear ruler has 45 degree angles on it.  Line the 45 degree angle up with the long edge of your strip and draw a line to the 1" mark on your strip.  The line you see going across my strip is not the 45 degree line, it is the 30 degree angel line.  ( Didn't want you to get confused on where to line up that line)

Fold the strip slightly beyond the point of the "V" and pin.  Notice my lines do not go all the way to the edge of the strips.  Pin.  Stitch through both layers following the "V" and not stitching beyond it.

Turn the corner of your pillow and starting right where the stitching of the "V" ended, stitch the strip to your second edge of the pillow.

Again, stop your stitching a 1/2" from the end, back stitch and remove from the machine.  At this corner you will probably need to join the other strip.  Although your strip may be long enough to go around the corner, it probably isn't long enough to make it to the next corner, so we will put our seam here where it will never show.

Draw your 3 marks at the 1/2", 1", and 1 1/2" again.  And again, draw your "V".  Trim the strip about 1/4" past the point of the "V".  Seam your next strip to this strip using a 1/4" seam allowance.

Stitch your "V", trim the seam allowance to 1/8".  Turn the corner and continue on like this around all 4 corners.

Once you have sewn your strips around all 4 edges, trim the seam allowance along the "V" to 1/8" also.

Turn the strip right side out, pushing the points of those "V"s out to make a nice sharp point.

Press the corners flat along your pillow edge.  You will begin to see the mitered edge taking shape.

I had to trim my seam allowance around my pillow to 3/8" because my fabrics had so much bulk that folding this mitered flange to the back was getting too bulky.

On the back side of your pillow, turn under 1/2" along the remaining strip edge and pin all along your pillow.

Hand stitch this edge to the pillow back, making sure your stitches do not show on the front.

Stuff your pillow with a pillow fill and you are finished!!!

What do you think?  Not so hard huh?!

The most challenging part about this pillow is the mitered flange and even that wasn't so hard once it is broken up into steps.

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