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Show Woman's World Make Slip-Covers for Summer To Add Fresh Color Scheme (hit lrlla JJafeti TjVEN though you may not spend as much of your time Indoors ai you do outdoors, , it's smart to make fresh slipcovers for dining and living room furniture just to give the home a change of color and feeling. Slipcovers are expensive to buy end more frequently than not you cannot find them In a color or pattern pat-tern to suit your furnishings. If every woman knew how really simple sim-ple they are to make, I'm sure that every home would have a set of covers to put on for the warm months. If you are an inexperienced seamstress, seam-stress, better choose a plain fabric or floral that does not need too much work when it comes to matching match-ing the motif or having an up-and-down design. You'll have to measure carefully each individual piece to make sure that you get enough fabric for covering. Here's how it's done: You'll need twice as much in width as the chair measures, plus one-third extra for height, plus enough to go around each cushion. A slipper chair, for example, will take three yards of 50-inch fabric, an overstuffed chair, 4 yards, a large arm chair with reversible cushions, 6 yards; a loveseat will also take 6 yards, a large couch with reversible cushions, 9. Decide how much each piece requires and add y yard extra where the design de-sign must be matched. If you want to save on fabric, you may decide that the bottom of the cushions can be of a different, perhaps per-haps less expensive fabric. Or, the bottom of the cushions can be paneled pan-eled from pieces of the same material ma-terial because they will not show. Fit Chairs and Couches As Boxes or Bodies Since no patterns are available lor all the different sizes of chairs and couches to be covered, you'll have to fit them yourself. That's easy, though, if you will just take a length of the material, pin it to the chair and make allowance for seams. When placing the fabric on -31 backs, if the chair Is of that type. If the chair is odd-shaped make a cushion and cover for the seat, using us-ing two pieces of heavy fabric to fit the seat and placing a layer of cotton between these two and stitching around the edge. Cut a top and bottom for the pad out of the fabric you want for the color scheme, place in position, binding or cording it. Attach ties for this, and have these come around the two back legs to hold the cushion and cover in place. After you are certain the pleats fit as you want them, machine stitch. ' The final pressing is done while the pleats are pinned together togeth-er to make sure they will stay together to-gether properly. Use a damp press cloth and press only moderately moder-ately hard. Remove the basting threads and then press again to remove any marks caused by these threads. Most slipcover materials do not ravel easily, and if the seams are cut with pinking shears, they will not have to be finished any further. If you want to use a binding or cording for trimming, baste this in place and then stitch so that it will not show too much. For simple summer slipcovers, this binding is not used often, although it is perfectly per-fectly proper if you desire it. Select crisp, gay prints ... the chair, see that the grain of the iabric is straight this can be marked with a chalk and ruler before be-fore placing the fabric on the chair). Allowance for generous seams is important in making slipcovers. You will remember that these are -washed constantly, and are pulled by use. The seams should be made :strong to withstand this. After the fabric is cut, it should be basted, pressed and stitched. A good idea is to cut and baste, then press and try on before doing the machine stitching. If there are any spots that pull this matter can be corrected before the cover is machine-stitched. Dining Room Chairs Easily Covered Always stitch perfectly straight on slipcovers because that is the next most important after fitting. This, of course, will be easy if the slipcover has been basted properly. prop-erly. Use a medium-long machine For summer tlipoven. stitch for best results and check the tension to be sure it is correct for the fabric. Allow for ease around the curved arm of the chair. In the dining room, the whole job will be one of covering only the seats of chairs, and perhaps the |