Make Something Monday - Something Old, Something New

Our patio chairs have been looking pretty rough for a while now.  We use the chairs all year long, so we can't put them up after summer is over to protect them.  We will probably replace them at some point with chairs that don't have cushions, but we have more important things to purchase right now, so the cushions have been on the back burner.

Still, I am pretty embarrassed when we have company over and they see the state of our patio furniture.  The blistering heat + all the rain we have had + a dog who likes to dig =

Pretty sad, isn't it?

I had seen a post on Pinterest where someone had re-covered her patio furniture with shower curtains to make them waterproof.  I though that was a brilliant idea, but all of the shower curtains that I found and liked were fabric and needed a liner because they were not waterproof.  Plus they were pricey.  One day when I was looking at fabric in Wal-Mart, I came across some material that was vinyl on one side and cotton on the other.  I don't know what it is technically called, but it reminds me of the cheap tablecloths that they sell during holidays.  Plus I really liked the pattern and the material was fairly cheap.

I pondered the project for a few weeks, but decided to give it a try when Deputy D was going to have a friend over and I knew they would be out in the backyard.  Plus, I haven't had a project for Make Something Monday in a while, and this seemed like a good one.

My first step was to call my mom and tell her what I was going to try and make sure that the material would sew on my sewing machine.  She seemed to think it would work.  However, when I went to purchase the material, a lady was shopping on the same aisle and was watching me wrestle down the very tall bolt of material.  She asked what I was planning on doing with the material, and I told her.  She eyed me very skeptically.  "Are you sure that's the best material to use for that project?"  I explained to her that I had discussed it with my mom, and we were pretty sure it would go through my machine and that I was confident that it would work fine.  She just said, "Hmmm... Well good luck with that," and then walked off shaking her head.

My confidence was shaken a bit, but I decided to give it a shot anyway.

I took the old cushion and then measured the material to fit around it.

 Then, pinned it down alone the edges and sewed it down.  I had a couple of areas where the machine was a bit finicky, but overall it sewed down just like regular material.

Once I sewed down the long edge and one short edge, I stuffed the old cushion in.

Now, this is probably now the best way to do this, but I just took the whole thing back to the machine and stitched down the last short edge all the way across and trimmed off the excess.  I planned on covering it with ribbon or bias tape, but I was not unhappy with the way it turned out, so I just left it alone.  Yes, you can see the seam on one edge, but I don't think it looks terrible.

Finally, I added a length of ribbon to each corner of the cushion to tie to down to the chairs.  I only had enough material to cover two of the existing cushions, but I am so pleased with the results that I can't wait to get more material to cover the rest!