How to Make Custom Slipcovers

Featured Pro: Kristan Cunningham
Category: Home Décor
Time: 4:22


KRISTAN CUNNINGHAM: Hi, there. I’m Kristan Cunningham, and this is your GMC Trade Secret.

You know, slipcovers are a fantastic option for dining room chairs, because they’re fairly inexpensive, you can take them off and wash them, and you can change them out according to the seasons or the holidays.

But let’s be honest. There’s not a ton of options out there. And anything you can find in a store means your neighbor can to. So I’m going to give you three really good options to customize your slipcovers fairly inexpensively.

Now, the first one, I’m going for a kind of vintage maritime look. And I’m starting with a basic white slipcover. So this guy is going to first get an iron transfer. Okay, so I’ve got the spot that I want on the back of the slipcover. I’m going to line it up where I want it to go.

If you want yours to be nice and crisp, you want to hold the iron on and then actually leave the page in place. But I’m going to pull it off a little bit early to get that kind of stamped look. Steam is very important. And I love the way it came out. So we’ve got that happening at the top. Now let’s move on to the skirt.

The goal here is to create a whole new skirt at that pleat high. So first let’s get on the bottom band. And so what I’m going to do is glue in place trim and measure as I go along. And this one I want to line up right with the top of my little kick pleats, because the idea is that each pleat becomes a whole new fabric panel.

Okay, that’s one panel. Now we have to do that three more times.

Okay, so I’ve got all four sides done now. Next is the rope trim. I found these brass guys at a boat supply store and love that they brought a kind of unexpected really bespoke detail to this. So my plan is to have them in the four corners. So I’m going to go ahead and weave them onto the rope first. Put him in place. Okay, I think that guy’s in place. Now, obviously this is number three of a series of, I don’t know, six or eight, however many guests you have.

Let’s try the next one. The next one is going to be a stencil treatment. And the most important thing that you can do when stenciling is make sure that you secure the stencil itself. And the way I’m going to keep it down is to put pins in the corners. So I’m going with a pretty neutral color, really pretty kind of greeny charcoal. So I’m going to do this pretty much all over the whole thing. Looks terrific. And now I’m going to redo the exact same thing just like this to create an all-over pattern.

Okay, so that’s it for the stenciling. So now that the stencil is done, I’m going to use blanket binding to make a nice band of contrast at the bottom of the skirt. Okay, that’s it. Tada.

The next one is so easy, it’s going to blow your mind. I am taking a length of industrial-strength Velcro. And I use the sticky-back kind so you don’t have to sew it or anything. So we’re going to pull back the paper, line this up in the middle, and we’re going to take that right back down the back side, take the other side. So we attach both our pieces, take that paper off, take a regular old table runner. Starting to see where this is going? Go just like that. Now let’s go see this one inside.

So now that we’ve seen how to make a couple of these guys, I really wanted to show you this one in context, because the chair lining up with the runner on the table is what this is all about. It’s such an effective design statement for so little money. And the best part is you can buy, like, 15 runners for what it would cost for one custom slipcover, which means birthday parties, holidays. You can change it out like that and completely change the look of your dining room.

I’m Kristan Cunningham, and this was your GMC Trade Secret.