Mission: Mod Vinyl

No, not that kind of vinyl. 

What I'm talking about is my newest upholstery project of three vinyl chairs.

I'm so bad about taking before pictures, but I have a bit of an excuse this time.  These chairs are for a new church office, and the pastor helped me by removing the old material before he dropped them off. He left one so I could see how to put them back together, which worked out great.

So I did have one chair to take a before picture of, but sadly, I forgot.

I did, however, get some shots of the bare bones of the chair.

This project was a great learning experience, as it included two things I had never worked with before.

1. Vinyl.

Vinyl is a pretty heavy materiel, which makes it hard to sew. Thankfully, these chairs didn't need much sewing. Instead, I used quite a lot of staples, and the other thing I had to learn about.

2. Ply Grip.

Scary looking stuff, isn't it? It was actually pretty fun to use once I got the hang of it.

Working with the vinyl was pretty neat too. Because it's manmade with a feel similar to leather, it doesn't fray, which is wonderful. The thickness did make it a bit tricky to recover the button details on the back of the chair, but I resolved that by simply sewing around the cover button, instead of trying to force it in the little press kit with the button back.

My client also refinished the chair frames, and let me have one of them to see how the chair seats would fit.

I researched the company marked on the chairs, and the closest I could find to their design was this:

The frame and arms are right on; just the style of the cushions is different. The chairs I did also weren't such a vibrant ochre color. :)

I don't know their age for sure, but they definitely have a mid century mod look; and the cream color I recovered them in accentuates that even more, I think.

Are you ready for the reveal?

As Becca has been saying, pretty "mod", huh?

I think they turned out nicely. :)

Usually chairs aren't allowed to sit on the table, but we made an exception for the photo.

 The ply grip allowed me to do the neat seams along the side with no sewing.

Sorry for the blurry photo, but here's a look at the ply grip before I folded the fabric around and secured it.

A finished side:

I only have time for a few projects before we're off to Bible school, but I'm glad I was able to do this one!