Monogrammed Dining Chairs

When I redecorated my dining room last year I ordered some Louis slipcovers from Ballards for 6 of my 8 dining room chairs.       That left 2 of my chairs covered with some really ugly, nasty orange crushed velvet that jumped out at me every time I went in my dining room to ohhh and ahh over its new look.       After seeing some amazing transformations other bloggers had achieved by simply stenciling a monogram or letter on their chair seats, it got me to thinking that would be a great fix for my chairs.    And what better treatment on those seats than to use drop cloths and black lettering, same idea as my drop cloth drapes in the dining room?     Easy, right?     Well, not for me.    Seems like everything I do gets complicated and never turns out like I want it to.

My first impulse was to simply make my own stencil and stencil our monogram on the chair seat.     That turned out a mess!     I won’t even go into the problems I encountered with that idea.

Next, I saw on Robyn’s blog how she printed off a mirror image on her computer onto transfer sheets and simply ironed it on to her fabric.     I quickly found out that none of the computers at work or home would make a mirror image.      Don’t even try and give me “how to’s” on creating a mirror image….trust me….I tried every suggestion and NOTHING!

So Robyn took pity on me and created a mirror image for me and emailed it to me.    THANKS ROBYN!    Hey, if ya’ll haven’t checked out my Southern sista’s blog, go here now and see what you’ve been missing.     You won’t be sorry.

Of course, the transfer sheets have to be printed on an INK JET printer and not a LASER JET printer.      Sooooo, I finally got my images printed and I’m really happy with how my chairs turned out.

Here’s the old crushed velvet seat.    Ugly!

This is the transfer paper I used.

 

After you print off your image, cut it out close to the edge of your design.    

 

Lay your design print side down on your fabric.    

Ironing my design on my drop cloth seat cover which I had already cut to fit the seat, allowing for wrapping around the seat to staple on the back.

I held my breath while I peeled away the transfer paper.      I know you see a “shadow” from the transfer paper but when you see the finished product, unless you look REALLY close, you don’t see it, so I won’t worry about it.

 

Boy Howdy, was I a happy girl!    Instant monogrammed chair covers!

 

Yes, I know it’s not perfectly centered, but ask me if I care!

 

 

 

 

See what I mean about not being able to see that shadow?

I love the way my drop cloth chair covers it turned out.     And let’s just pretend the twin  to this chair is done and sitting on the other side of the sideboard.      All I have to do is staple the fabric to that old ugly orange seat and I’ll have a “new” pair of chairs.

This was a fun project, even though I had a few road blocks along the way.    

I’m finally “done” in the dining room.     Now on to the sunroom…..