Lovely but Uncomfortable Chair

My mom gave me this chair over a year ago, and it took me until about a month or so ago to do something with it. I had never recovered anything before, but I had lots of fabric and paint choices in my stash, so now seemed like as good a time as any. The springs hit your booty in all the wrong places, so it's not the kind of chair you would invite someone you like to sit in.

Here's the poor thing, all nasty and dirty, but her inner beauty showing through:

 It took quite some time to take all the staples out to remove the fabric. I used my magnetic pin holder to keep all the staples in one place and off the carpet. Doesn't Bailey looked thrilled?

Please excuse the bed. I have to do so many of my projects inside!

There she is, all naked and ready for some new clothes. I thought about using houndstooth:

Or some plain cream canvas:

I also had this tablecloth that was a golden, yellowish color with red flowers:

Or this bold black and cream floral:

In the end, I decided to use the yellow and blue toile panels I got at Lowe's for 50% off the $7.49 on the package:

I had two packages so I had some leeway in case I messed up. I didn't replace any of the foam or batting because it seemed to be in pretty good condition.

I painted the body with ASCP in Arles (two coats) and sprayed a couple or three coats of polycrylic:

I used the fabric pieces I removed as my pattern. This was the hard part, because the pattern pieces weren't exact and I had to cut the back part twice. Thank goodness I had two panels! I fitted, trimmed, pulled, tucked, folded, and stapled the fabric to the chair. It's kind of the type of thing you have to do for it to click, and now I feel pretty sure I could do it again.

I got some cording at JoAnn and made what I like to call "bootleg double welt cord." There are two really great tutes out there, one from Centsational Girl and the other from Prudent Baby. I don't have a zipper foot (I don't think) and I didn't have much of a bias to cut on since I was trying to just use scraps at this point and save the larger pieces I had left for later. So, I had to improvise.

I folded the fabric around the cord as tight as I could, sewed along the cord, and then folded it over and sewed it again, but in the middle between the two cords. It worked! It's best to leave some fabric at the end to attach to the chair. Sorry, I didn't think to take more photos than these two. I was trying to figure this out!

I attached cording to the chair around the arms, along the rear panel, and around the legs to cover the staples. I used my cheapo Dollar General hot glue gun. Et voila, c'est fini:

I had to kind of rig this to cover the over cut! Oops.

I put this for sale on Craigslist because while I have nothing against toile or this style of chair, it's not really what I am going for in my house. I honestly didn't think it would sell, and I offered to give it back to my mother. Low and behold, it sold, and for my asking price! The woman who bought it seemed to really like it. She said she wanted a chair for her foyer and I told her this would be perfect since it wasn't that comfortable anyway.

I might try this again, but it was quite the project. However, I think I have a better of idea of what to do, and I think I started with a rather ambitious piece.

Thanks for visiting!