Adding A Dust Cover to Upholstery Projects

A dust cover is that black fabric that’s generally under a store bought chair that helps to conceal springs and chair guts. At nine bucks for five yards, it’s super cheap and pretty easy to add to your DIY upholstery projects. If you’ve done a chair makeover for your own home and are too lazy to add the dust cover, I can’t blame ya. No one is gonna know but you.

 But, if you’re lookin’ to get into the biz of flippin’ furniture, a dust cover is a must. Imagine selling a chair and when the person loads it up into their car, they see this:

So what? You have their cash in your hand, what do you care?

Quality, bro.

It’s the difference between a one-time sale and a repeat customer. The dust cover also helps in the hagglin’ process.

“Fiddy bucks off?! It’s got a dust cover! It’s totes profesh!”

Maybe don’t say it like that, but you get my drift.

This really only takes a couple minutes to add to your upholstery projects, and, even if you are doing a keep-it-for-yourself job, what if you want to sell it one day? It’s worth those extra coupla minutes on a dust cover to get a few extra bucks for what’s perceived as a higher quality item.

You can cut the dust cover fabric when you cut the fabric to upholster the seat, or if you’re a procrastinator, like me, you can do it weeks after the chair has been done and just set the chair on top of the fabric…

…and then cut around the legs to get the approximate shape of the underside of the chair seat.

A rough cut is fine, no one will see the edges of the fabric. Flip your chair over and lay the fabric over the underside of the chair. Fold the fabric under and then staple it to the chair as close to the edge of the fabric as possible.

Get as close as you can to the edge of the black fabric so you wont be able to see any little black fabric flaps showing when you flip the chair back over.

The principle is the same as doing the regular upholstery (find more tips & tricks here). Pull taut, start at one point and work your way out.

Keep folding the fabric under, pulling taut and stapling close to the edge of the fold, making your way all the way around the underside of the chair.

Another bonus: If you don’t want to remove all those pesky staples from under the chair when you are removing the original upholstery, this will cover them up! Score one for the lazy girl.

There. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just as long as it doesn’t sag when you set it upright.

So…. which one would you pay more for?