A Little Drop Cloth Magic

To be perfectly honest, I have found this whole painter's drop cloth upholstery phenomenon a little hard to get!    When all these amazing transformations first began to appear in blogland I was a little dubious.  Painter's drop cloth?   Hmm......    The only painter's drop cloths I could find were at my local Bunnings store.  They were a dirty grey in colour and looked to be coated in some shiny waterproofing stuff.   Hardly the type of  fabric that I would want adorning my chairs and windows.

However persistence has paid off and a couple of weeks ago whilst checking out paint in another hardware store I stumbled across these little gems - "RotaCota" drop cloths.    Now I get it!    These are going to revolutionise my decorating.

First project to get the RotaCota decorating treatment - my rattan dining room chairs.  See those six chairs just behind where  Dixie Chick is sitting.

No patterns or templates here - I just simply draped the drop cloth over the front of the chair and started pinning.    In fact my entire approach to this project was to pin - cut - sew!  The beauty of these drop cloths is that there is just SO much fabric.  If something is not right - well it's just simply a matter of cutting off another piece.  



Once I was happy with the pinning - I then cut off all the surplus fabric and then sewed along the pin line (removing the pins as I went!)  The one thing I found with this project was there was an awful lot of slipping  off and slipping on.   This certainly helped with getting a good fit.



Then came the seat.   To help secure the seat to the base of the chair and stop it riding up every time anyone sat on it - I made a little trim which fitted nice and snug around the chair.  Again, more pinning/trimming and sewing. 



See how I secured the trim at the back.  That upholstered seat wasn't going anywhere!



Next up was the skirt.   I decided to go for a  tailored look and took deep pleats at each corner.   I then pinned the skirt to the seat to make sure it was the right length.

Off  with the cover again for some more sewing. 

Turn it right side out ( don't forget to remove ALL the pins) and voila!

All finished!

Yes, I'm quietly happy with the way this little project has turned out.

Can't wait to get started on my next RotaCota project!