Shaker Tape for Chair Seats, 100% Cotton, 5/8 in or 1 in, 6 Colors

Shaker tape is a flat woven cotton tape, and it makes one of the friendliest woven seats for a first-timer. It wraps around the rails of a chair or stool and weaves over and under itself, giving a comfortable seat with a crisp checkerboard or herringbone pattern. This tape is 100% cotton, 5/8 in or 1 in wide, in natural, black, navy, barn red, forest green and mustard.

It suits ladderback and Shaker-style chairs, rockers, footstools and benches with four rails around the seat.

How a tape seat goes together:

• Warp: one long run of tape wrapped around the front and back rails, front to back, until the seat is covered from side to side. The start is tacked where it will not show.
• Padding: a thin foam pad slides in between the top and bottom layers of the warp. It fills out the seat and makes it softer.
• Weft: a second color, or the same one, woven side to side over and under the warp, on the top and on the underside.

Over one, under one gives the checkerboard. Going over and under more than one tape, and stepping the pattern along by one tape each row, gives herringbone and other diagonal patterns.

Shaker tape is woven dry, straight off the roll, with no soaking. Keep the warp evenly tensioned and push each weft row tight against the last. To join a new length, overlap the ends and sew them together, and plan the joint so it falls on the underside of the seat.

If the front rail is longer than the back, the warp leaves a gap at each front corner. Fill those with short extra lengths of tape before you start the weft. The woven seat project page has the tacks and tools for the job.

Width first. The 5/8 in tape gives a finer pattern; the 1 in tape covers faster with fewer rows and a bolder check.

Then quantity. A 16 x 14 in seat takes about 25 yd of 1 in tape, or about 40 yd of 5/8 in tape, often 20 yd each of two colors. For another size, multiply the seat's width by its depth in inches at the widest points, then divide by 9 for 1 in tape, or by about 5.5 for 5/8 in tape, to get the yards. Round up.

So a 16 x 14 in seat in two colors of 5/8 in tape takes two 10 yd lengths of each color, and in one color of 1 in tape, three. The 75 yd roll of 5/8 in tape covers one color on about three such seats, which suits a set of chairs.