How to Make Chair Pads With Ties

Make your chairs more comfortable with tied chair pads.

While they make an attractive decorating element, wooden-seated chairs are often uncomfortable for those seated on them. Chair pads offer some relief, but they slide around or fall off easily. Make your own chair pads with ties, and you will have cushions that match your personal tastes and stay in place.

Things You'll Need

• Tracing paper
• Dressmakers' pins
• Scissors
• Fabric, cotton
• Bias tape (optional)
• Sewing machine
• Foam cushion pad

Instructions

1. Lay the tracing paper on the chair seat and trace the seat.

2. Add half of the thickness of the pad plus three-eighths of an inch around the tracing lines you just made. This will make your pattern large enough to cover the surface and sides of the pad, as well as allowing for a seam allowance.

3. Fold the fabric in half. Pin the pattern to the fabric and cut it out by following the tracing edge.

4. Cut four strips of fabric two inches by nine inches, or cut four nine-inch lengths of bias tape.

5. Fold the strips in half lengthwise with their right sides together.

6. Stitch along the cut end and one long side.

7. Turn the ties right side out by attaching a safety pin to the sewn end and pushing it back through each tie.

8. Pin two ties to the right side of one piece of fabric about one-quarter of the way across the width, overlapping the ties on top of one another. Align the open end of the ties with the edge of the fabric at what will be the back of the cushion. Do the same with the other two ties, measuring from the opposite side of the fabric.

9. Pin the remaining piece of fabric to the first with right sides together, with the ties toward the center.

10. Stitch three sides --- including the one with the ties --- using a five-eighths-inch seam allowance.

11. Trim the seam allowances to a quarter-inch and clip them diagonally across the corners. Turn the cover right side out.

12. Insert the foam pad into the cover.

13. Fold the open seam allowance to the inside and hand-stitch it closed.

Tips & Warnings

• Brocades and velvets are also appropriate fabrics for this project.

References

• "Textile Furnishings"; Learn How to Make Kitchen Chair Pads; July 2010
• "Elle Decor"; How to Make Chair Cushions; Donna Talley