Chairs Can Have School Spirit Too...

One of the things I've been committed to since moving into our new house is that our living room will look like a "living room"...as in we will not over cram it with furniture and most particularly...NO COMPUTER DESK.  This meant we had to switch out our old (and now really shabby) particle board computer desk for a smaller hand-me-down wooden one, so the computer can fit in the dining room.  This also means there was also not room for our awesome-but-starting-to-look-shabby office chair given to us by some good friends a while ago.  Hubby spends plenty of time working at his desk at school, so it's gone to live there. 

But first it needed a face lift (sorry, I regret to say that I forgot to take a before picture...The seat had seat was all torn up and the arm rests were getting worn, so you can imagine what it looked like.

This is what it looks like now...

I most have cotton quilting fabric and T-shirt knits...not much along the lines of what you'd use to re-upholster a chair...so I used Hubby's old jeans.  I found the back sides of the legs to be the most useful because the fronts were too full of holes.  I sewed them together in roughly the shape of the seat with extra to go under and be stapled to the bottom.

I used T-shirt scraps and Heat'n Bond Lite to applique the high school initials onto the seat. 
I also did a tight zig zag along the edges rather than my typical straight stitch because the seat will get a lot of wear and rubbing.

On the sizes where there had to be holes in the fabric for some screws to go through, I reinforced it with a knit circle and zig zaged around the hole and the edges of the circle.  Since I used denim, I didn't want it to start fraying on me from those holes.

And I wasn't very careful when I marked where the holes needed to go and had it on the seat backward...so I had to make a second set of reinforced holes.  Measure twice and cut once...

I've never reupolstered anything before, but I think it turned out pretty decent for a first attempt.  I still want to make kind of a cover part to go over the top of the back...but Hubby will have to wear out more jeans first...and he won't go through jeans as quickly now that he wears dress pants to work.

It might be a little cheesy, but the high schoolers who were hanging around outside while I was unloading the chair from the car seemed genuinely impressed.

So now this chair which came with his school desk has found a new home with one of the math teachers...

And Hubby can sit more comfortably in this one.

Sweet Pea makes a really cheesy smile for the camera lately...I guess we know who she inherited that trait from. ;)