Feed Sack Chair Makeover

A couple months back, I bought a round oak kitchen table for the spot in our kitchen where our too-large table once sat. I loved the table, but our chairs were a little too big, too bulky, made that end of the room seem too heavy. I was willing to live with it, but...

One afternoon a couple weekends ago, I drove by a house in town on the way to pick up pizza, and sitting by a curb was a set of four matched oak chairs, exactly what I wanted...

And as the hand-lettered sign on the chair said, 4/$30, I couldn't believe it! I stopped and headed to the door, hoping no one else had already spoken for them. I was lucky, they were mine! I paid the money. Because I was driving the Suburban, I loaded them up and came home (after I picked up the pizza!).
It took me a few weeks, but one day our weather was rainy, dreary for the fourth day in a row, and I was stuck in the house again.

I went out and brought those babies in from the garage and started tearing the seats down.

Digging through my fabric stash, nothing seemed to pop out at me, I had gingham in blue and red, but gingham was already very prominent in the the kitchen, and you can over do a pattern like that in a small space.

I kept hunting, and none of the prints looked right. I didn't want to have to buy anything, I wanted to use what I already had! Lo and behold, in one stack of fabric I found some feed sacks; they're not actually old, but they looked great; they said "farmhouse"! to me.

They're from an elevator in a nearby town, and I'd picked them up at our neighbor's garage sale for a quarter apiece a couple years back.

(I have a few left, I wonder what they will become?)

I started by taking off the upholstery, and underneath I found an old, cracked mess of fake leather? To cover that and add some needed cushion, I went to my stash of useful items from garage sales and took out a twin mattress pad. It helped cover the brown so the darkness wouldn't show through and give the covering an even base...

(These are well worth the dollar they normally sell for at garage sales. I just wash them and stash them to have a couple on hand for projects like this. Much more useful and much cheaper than plain quilt batting for some projects, I use them for things like this all the time.)

I cut a piece to fit each chair seat and stapled it into place with the heavy duty staple gun.

I centered the feed sacks, cut them and stapled them to the chair cover and screwed all of the covers back into place! I treated them with a couple coats of Scotch Guard the next day when I could get outside.

The whole job took a couple of hours, start to finish! I just love how useful vintage items like these old chairs, are made to be reused and recovered for years and years.

These chairs are the perfect match for the table, and...

the chair covers are the perfect match for a farmhouse kitchen!

Chairs $30
Feedsacks $1
Twin mattress cover $1
$32 total cost!