How to Recover a Nursery Glider (the easy way)

This post is about how to recover a nursery glider.

Ever since we moved into our house almost a month ago and painted baby M’s nursery, I have been piecing together in my brain items we needed to complete the space. One item that has always been on this list was a glider/rocker and ottoman. The problem with this is that they range in price (for a decent one) from about $250-$450. Already having to spend so much money to get ready for baby, this thought did not make me happy, so I had been putting off the purchase. Then, a couple weeks ago I was browsing a local consignment shop and got a bad cramp in my foot. I immediately was looking for a place to sit down and this glider was right where I was standing.

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So, I sat, and while wincing in pain from my cramp, began to rock and realized hey, this is pretty comfortable! I looked at the price tag….$89 for the chair AND ottoman! Yes, please! I took a picture and sent it to Bobby, and he agreed it was a good buy, so it came home with me. Now, I have no idea who owned said glider before me, nor did I want to sit in their baby vomit, so I decided to recover the chair. (Those that know me and my lack of crafty-ness may laugh hysterically now). I started where else, but Pinterest, and found LOTS of cute ideas….but most of them involved a sewing machine, creating armrests, adding batting, among other things well above my skill level. I quickly changed my search to “how to recover a nursery glider with no sewing” and found a few options such as adding velcro and hot glue, using iron and stick on tape….still a little “eh” on wanting to do something like that for a chair most people will never see. So, I decided to just wing it, and headed to the craft store for some fabric and….something to get it onto the chair, at that point I wasn’t sure what. I came home with two colors of fabric, some VELCRO Brand – Sticky Back Tape and some Uncarded Liquid Stitch, 4-Ounce

…still with no idea how I was going to pull this off and recover a nursery glider.

Yall, I’m going to give you a warning right now. If you are a crafty person, you may want to stop reading. If the thought of someone not doing something the “right way” makes you want to twitch, you are NOT going to want to read about how I completed this project. I get it, you are very talented in this area and roll your eyes at people like me, and that is fine! I just want to warn you to divert your eyes, or you may end up at my house fixing my chair for me because you just can’t sleep at night.

I started by laying out the fabric and putting the back and bottom cushion on it to see how much I had. Well, I thought I was going to have enough to completely cover the front and back, but I misjudged. Never fear, who is going to see the back anyway? I would make do.

Apparently Sassy thought it would be a nice place for a nap. I began folding the corners over and started using safety pins to pull it tight, and figured I would come back later with the velcro or SOMETHING to make it look more professional (haha). Below is what the back cushion looked like after I safety pinned it all the way around.

I did the same with the bottom cushion, then decided to come back to this part later and then moved on to the ottoman. This was a little bit trickier because the fabric was stapled down all around the bottom. I thought about doing the same, but don’t have a staple gun. I did however have a new tube of liquid stitch, so I thought I would give it a go. I basically wrapped the edges like a present and ran a line of the glue all the way around, and for added support used safety pins on the four corners as well.

It looks a total mess underneath but I think from the top you can’t tell and it came out nice!

When I finished that part, I decided to put the cushions on the chair and place the ottoman “just to see how it looked”. Well….my safety-pinned cushions didn’t look half bad! Does it look awesome? Absolutely not, but for its purposes and my skill set, it looked ok by me. I decided to just leave the safety pins in the cushions and not do anything else to it. That way, if I ever wanted to take the fabric off or change it, it would be fairly simple.

So…I give you, my safety-pinned glider and liquid stitch ottoman!

So for anyone who is like me, who wants to recover a nursery glider but has no idea how to do it in a simple, non-sewing way, remember there is hope! It may not be the prettiest or hold up the longest, but I think it looks better than it did before, and I don’t think baby M will mind it one bit.

Related: Free shipping on rugs for your nursery (or any room!) from Rugs USA

QOTD: are you crafty? Have you ever tried to “wing” an art project

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