Vintage nursery glider revival.
The last three cushion recovery jobs I completed all just happened to be for vintage nursery gliders. Whether the chairs were purchased second hand or passed down from one generation to another, they were all in great shape, just in desperate need of a fresh look. And that's easy to do! A new fabric on the cushions makes the chairs look like brand new! Instead of boring you with thirty pictures of essentially the same cushions, I'll just show some pictures of one chair I recovered with my favourite fabric...
I started off with five cushions (seat and back cushion, two arm rest cushions, and a footrest cushion); the foam inserts were in excellent shape but the fabric had seen better days. Not only was it outdated, the faded sand colour looked drab, was worn in various places, and overall the cushions looked dated, tired, and boring.
My customer had opted to shop for her own fabric so when she delivered a big bolt of a quality upholstery fabric in gray with a modern cream dotted print, I was in love (I had actually chosen the same fabric in teal for some throw cushions!). I got straight to work and just a few hours later, the cushions had made a fabulous comeback...
The first thing you may notice is that the "new" back cushion is now flat and smooth with no stitching across the centre. I eliminated those seams for two reasons; one - I felt the cushion would look more modern without those seams, and two - there is no way I could fit a thick, firm cushion into my standard sewing machine to replicate those seams so... good bye centre seams! To do this, I simply layered batting into the crevices until the entire cushion surface was of the same height, then covered the whole cushion in one layer of batting. To prevent the cushions from falling out of the chair, I inserted cords in the top corners of the back cushion and rear corners of the seat cushion for quick and easy tying to the chair frame.
The new cover is a perfect fit; it is snug around the foam insert, but doesn't squeeze it too tight, which means no bunching or pulling.
All seams are perfectly straight and have a generous seam allowance so the fabric will not fray, rip, or pull out of the seams over time.
And check out these curves! Perfectly straight and smooth all over.
Finally, the arm rest cushions. Due to their irregular shape, I simply used the old fabric pieces as a pattern to sew the new covers.
The arm rest cushions have a strip of velcro tape so they can be secured around the chair frame.
The "new" cushions look amazing! Along with a fresh coat of white paint on the wood chair frame, this vintage glider has been transformed! Before it looked worn, boring, and dated. Now the glider sports a fabulous new look!
