Recliner Cover

This is a story about an old, red recliner and a paint tarp. We inherited the recliner from my grandfather after he passed away some years ago. It has gotten a lot of use since then. Specifically, Meatball has gotten a lot of use out of it. When we lived in the townhouse we kept the recliner in the office. We are pretty certain Meatball would spend his entire day sleeping there while we were at work.

Since moving, Meatball seems to have lost his affinity for the recliner. I don’t think it gives him the view of the neighborhood he was used to. And he’s decided to upgrade his sleeping spot to the living room sofa. This put me on a mission to clean up the recliner and give it a new life.

Enter the paint tarp.

It’s probably been at least a year since I pinned this amazing recliner slipcover on Pinterest. Realizing my limitations with the sewing machine (i.e. I barely know how to use it) I knew I wouldn’t get identical results but liked the idea of cover. Plus, by using a paint tarp, if the project was a major fail I would not have wasted a ton of money.

This is about the time when I thought I was getting myself into a one weekend, maybe two, project…. and it turned into the longest project ever. I’ve concluded I can spend months working on a painting but have very little patience for sewing.

I wish I could say I have some good advice on how to approach this, but I really don’t. My technique was to pin a section, then sew. I started with the back of the chair, worked my way to the arms, then the seat, and lastly the footrest. To get the individual pieces to hug the chair I used Velcro. I used Velcro because I didn’t want to make the cover permanent. I wanted the option to wash if needed. Agony. Pure agony.

I honestly can’t remember if what’s pictured here was one or two weekends of work. It’s sad, I know.

Eventually I got to this point. I really loved the idea of the pleated bottom edge but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Not to mention, I’m no master seamstress. So I went with a simple straight edge.

After many, many hours my recliner started looking close to done. It’s not perfect but I think it does the job for now. If we ever want to recover this we might just have to splurge on a new chair. I’m never doing this again.