Reupholstering a Chair

My mom gave me a chair that used to belong to my great grandmother. It is very sentimental to me because it was in my parents house while I was growing up but over the years the upholstery gave out and it had a tear right in the front of it. It needed to be recovered and I have issues with spending lots of money on something I'm not sure about. I couldn't pick a fabric that I loved and I didn't want to pay an upholster $300 to recover the chair.

 I came across a post on pinterest where a lady at Cottage and Vine recovered her chair with a drop cloth and I thought "I can do that".

I bought some fabric on clearance and started tearing apart the chair.

I kept the fabric I took off to use as a pattern and I took pictures as I went so I could remember what the chair looked like before. 

My sewing machine broke right before I attempted this so I just made cording by using fabric glue. I used my husbands staple gun to put the seat of the chair on.

I then covered the existing back chair cushion with fabric and sewed the center lines by hand.  I'm not going to lie, it was hard work.  I about gave up several times (my husband thought I was crazy the whole time) but I stuck with it and it turned out pretty good.  My husband thinks I should open an upholstery business now and I got a "new" chair for about $40.

It's not perfect.  Far from it but it filled an empty corner and I'm pretty proud that I recovered a chair all by myself.