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How to Cover Dining Chairs With Crochet

Jessica Cook

If you're looking to spruce up your dining room decor, consider covering your dining chairs with crochet. You can purchase the supplies for a relatively low cost, and change them whenever you get the time and the inclination. Crocheting dining chair covers is simple due to the easy shape of the project, and you can easily customize your creation with embroidered embellishments. You will need a working knowledge of crochet to complete this project as it provides instructions on how to crochet dining chair covers without giving an explicit pattern.

  1. Gather your supplies. You will need yarn, preferably in a washable material such as cotton or acrylic in case you get food stains on your chair covers. Choose a crochet hook in the size recommended on the yarn label; to determine how much yarn you will need, proceed to step 2.

  2. Make a gauge swatch. Choose the stitches you want to use for your covers; use any stitch pattern you like. Make a square of your stitches, and measure how many stitches you used per inch to help you determine how many stitches you need to use in your design. For example, if you used two stitches per inch and your chairs are 15 inches wide, complete 30 inches per row of your finished project. Unravel your swatch, and measure how many yards of yarn you used to make it; now you know how much yarn you used per that many inches, and you can calculate how much yarn you will use per chair by determining how many of those gauge swatches would cover one chair.

  3. Begin your project. Crocheting in the round is probably the easiest way to do this, so you can slip your cover right over the back of the chair when you finish. Start with a foundation chain that gives you the number of stitches you need to go across the back of your chair, adding on an extra inch for "wiggle room." Crochet across your foundation stitches, and keep going around the other side of the foundation chain by crocheting three stitches in the last chain and going around the back of the work instead of turning. Crochet two stitches in the first chain, and join to your first stitch; continue to crochet in the round from here.

  4. Build your project by continuing to crochet in the round until your chair cover is as tall as the back of your dining room chair. If your chair's width increases as it gets closer to the seat, make stitch increases as you go; you can measure this by simply trying the cover on the chair as you finish every few rounds to be sure it still fits. Increase as needed to make it slide easily over the back of your chair.

  5. Finish your project. You may wish to add button holes to the bottom hem of your project so you can button the cover in between the rungs of your chair to secure it. Or add ribbon ties to the bottom hem of your finished project to help it stay on the chair or simply leave it and let it slide on and off more easily. Crochet flower motifs to embellish your project if you like, or crochet a large doily in a contrasting color to add to the middle of each chair cover for a visual spark. You can also hand-embroider your project using yarn and a yarn needle, if you prefer, or leave the chair covers plain for a simple look.