Home Upholstery

Chair-covers, like crumb-cloths, serve two ends - preserve the freshness of new furniture, or conceal the shabbiness of old. In either case they form 'an important feature of the apartment, and theref ore merit a caref ui selection. For lightness and delicacy, prefererice is given, in washing fabrics, to tinyilowered patterns on white and pale gray grounds, or hollands and linens grded with scarlet and blue twill These, however, soil too rapidly for general use, and it is more advisable to choose foliage designs or sprays on dark green, red and blue grounds. The two latter are the most perfectly ingrain. Green, as a rule, turns yellow after the fust wash. For easy or wicker chairs, it is usual to make a loóse cover or slip, which passes completely over the chair ; but smaller ones require merely a covering for the stuffed seat. There are three kinds of loose covers. A sort of chairshaped bag, an improved substitute for the dusting sheet ; the more closelyfitting cover, tastened at the back or side ; and a similar one which drops right over and is ad j usted by tape strings, the latter being almost exclusively reserved for cane and wicker chairs. The best materials for these include cretonne, chintz, poplin, linen, drill, holland, crumb-cloth, crash, etc. Occasionally covers are more or less elaborately adorned with embroidery, either bands, medallions, bouquets. etc, er, in plain linen and holland, ornamented with perpendicular strips of the material, vandyked at the edges andslashed at intervals down the centre, to thread in and out a bright-colored ribbon. Linlng is essential, both f or strength and set, except with a particuiarly stout material the backings usually employed are unbleached calicó and what is known to upholsterers as longcloth linlng. Sofa-covers, though oí larger proportions. follow the foregoing rules. They include also the squab, pillow, and sometimes bolster cases. The squab case is simple cnough to cut out, but requires particular neatness of execution in order that the joining of the breadths may leave no ugly line. The arrangement of the pattern too, is all Important; it should match so exactly that each strip or trail on the valance meets unbrokenly the corresponding one on the border, and continúes thenee on the upper side of the squab and sofa back. One side of the squab case is lef t open to admit the squab, and afterward neatly felled, tied or buttoned. For the latter, turn down a broad hem on the overlapping side, run a strip on the under side, and place the buttons and button-holes, as aiready explained in chair-covers. Seat-coverings take on the average about three-quarters of a yard of thirtysix-inch material. Procure an exact pattern of the shape, chalk it, and cut it out on the chintz, silk or damask, with quarter-inch turnings. Measure ofï a border, which, with a narrow hem shall reach just to the edge of the woodwork frame. Stitch to the seat with or without cording, nick out for the back legs, and take the sllts. Curve out spaces for the front legs, and f asten the cover to the chair by strings tied underneath at the legs. In another plan the border projects an inch beyond the chair frame, and a tape, run through the hem, is tied round one of the back legs. Sometimes a f ancy chai will display, at the back, a kind of stuff ed medallion in needle-work, yelvet silk, etc. A handy mode of covering this is to cut out a round in chint, ete., rather wider than the ornament in circumference, and through the hem insert a tañe. Trim the edíce with a goffered ruching, place the ehintz over the medaillon, draw up the tape and conceal the tie by a bow or rosette. For convenience the ehintz is often merely tacked beneath the ruching. The same plan is adopted for elbow coverings.-