Have you ever shopped for fabric and not been able to find that perfect one? You can’t decide on a color. You’re not sure if a print, solid, or textured fabric works best in the room. Finding the perfect fabric to recover chairs doesn’t have to be difficult, you just have to look around your room and think differently when you shop.
The original fabric on the chairs was pure black, but it had faded. Over the years, I recovered the chairs with different color fabrics – green – white – red. All of them were acceptable, but never quite right.
So I took a look around my kitchen and dining room to choose a new color for the chair seats. My walls are a light yellow. My curtains have yellows, deep reds, and a bit of navy blue; but my favorite items in the room were all blue.
Blue is my favorite color – almost all shades of blue, but especially the deeper tones. Adding black to blue creates a denim, navy, and midnight shade of blue. Like a pure black, these darker shades of blue can ground a room.
So it was time for another trip shopping trip.
At the fabric store, I headed to the Home Decor fabric section in search of a print with a dark blue. None of them seemed quite right. They were really busy and would interfere with the print on the curtains and the deep blue napkins I was currently using as a table runner. I didn’t want to introduce another busy print into the room.
In the same Home Decor section, I looked at the outdoor fabrics and the cotton canvas fabrics. The outdoor fabrics were expensive at nearly $30 per yard, so they were out.
The cotton canvas, on the other hand, is one-third the price of the outdoor fabric and since it’s a durable as a pair of jean, it’s a good option for seat covers.
Cotton canvas comes in several primary solid colors. The black was just too… well… black. The blue they offered was too bright. Both were very flat. I wanted something in between the blue and the black and something with a bit more texture.
At that instant I knew the exact fabric that would work perfectly… denim.
Denin is inexpensive at just $9.99 per yard (Joann’s Fabric), but I had a 50% off coupon, making it just $5.00 per yard.
Just like denim jeans, there are many different shades of denim from light to dark. The lighter shades would make great accent pillows. I happen prefer the darker shades for these seats. The darker shades are a blue with shades of black and I love how it has just enough texture as to not appear flat. It also happens to be the exact color blue in the rooster picture hanging in my kitchen
and the color of the runner on my dining room table.
The deep blue would work perfectly with my white birch dining table (which matches the barstool chairs) and my darker stained dining chairs (which match my kitchen cabinets).
To recover the chair seats, simply remove the 4 screws securing the seats to the frames. Lay the seats upside downs on top of the fabric.
Staple the fabric into place. Easy.
A thirty-minute project that makes me happy every time I walk into the room!
The next time you can’t find the perfect fabric in the Home Decor section of the store, look elsewhere. You may find what you need in other areas or in other stores – like a tablecloth you can cut down or a long curtain panel.
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My kitchen chairs are in desperate need of recovering. Thanks for the info!
Every day I walk into my kitchen and stare at these chairs. I still love this fabric on them.
My wife and I have been needing to do some furniture reupholstering, so I was looking at fabric and I think she’d love the denim seat covers in your post! I like how you mentioned that there are different shades of denim, and that you could use different shades for different furniture. I’m going to have to see what she thinks of the denim reupholstering and if its something she’d like to do for us!