Make & Do: Greenwich Steel Fabric Upholstered Chair

You can breathe new life into your favourite chair with our Greenwich Steel Fabric…

Do you have a piece of furniture that has seen better days but you can’t bear to part with it? Well rather than throw it away, why not simply give it a new lease on life and upgrade it with this season’s Laura Ashley fabric? The wonderfully talented Ashley from Lazy Daisy Jones faced a similar predicament so she set to work to cover one of her favourite vintage chairs in our modern Greenwich Steel Fabric. Read below to see how she did it…

Last year we were given a beautiful vintage Ercol chair and matching footstool. Since then it has been at the top of my ‘to do something about’ list. We use the chair on a daily basis, quite simply because it is very comfortable. The awful green ‘nylon velour’ is usually covered with a huge welsh blanket, therefore it is all so easy to forget what is underneath… out of sight out of mind!

Here is the chair in question, posing for it’s ‘before’ photos…I have to warn you, the green velour is not a pretty sight.

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So when Laura Ashley got in touch to ask if I had any DIY projects that they could help with, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I chose some of their beautiful Greenwich Steel Floral Fabric. A large modern floral print in a perfect weight for covering our chair; a mix of 49% linen and 51% cotton. The grey and white colourway is so fresh and pretty too!

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I set to work…

My first task was to make a paper pattern from the old covers. I unpicked them, separated them, and made some notes about the order they had been originally sewn in. Next I traced around the original covers and and cut out some brown paper pattern pieces. As an alternative you could just pin the original pieces to the new fabric, but then I always worry about getting the new fabric dirty.

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It all came together very fast and according to plan…for a change!

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Then that moment: you know the one? When you set up the shot and its looking mighty fine…then Mr pooch wanders in and settles down to observe the proceedings…!

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PS. A huge thank you must go to Laura Ashley for supplying the fabric and enabling me to finally tick this one off my List!

A massive thank you to you Ashley for recovering a chair in such effortless fashion. Are you inspired to see what you can do with our fabric? Let us know below or on Twitter @lauraashleyusa! and check out our range of fabric on the website.