What Are the Best Tips for Chair Weaving?

How do I repair the weave that crisscrosses around the legs of my cane chair? What is the material I use, please?

@John57 - The weaving technique would be fundamentally the same, but obviously you would use different materials that would be handled differently (no soaking).

I know that you can replace the webbing on a lawn chair, because my mother used to do it when I was a kid. She's very handy!

She also replaced several cain chair seats. Her basic premise was that you could do pretty much anything with a book from the public library and a spirit of adventure! She did redid a few footstools and a couple kitchen chairs and they came out pretty well.

Would you use the same kind of chair weaving techniques to repair lawn chairs?

I have several lawn chairs taking up space in my garage that are in great shape except for the seats. I think you could make these as good as new by weaving new chair seats on them.

If I knew how to do this properly, I could probably get them to last a lot longer than they usually do. It seems like they fall apart pretty easily and I would love to know how to fix them myself.

This is something I have been interested in for a long time. I have seen some chair weaving instruction kits advertised in magazines, but I learn better by someone showing me how to do it instead of just reading about it.

My husband and I like to go to estate sales, and I have seen so many old, high quality chairs that just need some seat weaving repair.

If those chairs were refinished and had new seats, they would really look nice. You can buy chairs like this for next to nothing. If you know what you are doing, you can have a whole set of these chairs for a small price.

I think I need to start asking around to see if someone can give me some instruction on how to do this.

My grandparents had two old rocking chairs that needed repair. I was always interested in knowing how to do this, so figured it would be a good project.

I was fortunate enough to have a neighbor who knew how to weave chairs, so he was willing to teach me. Most people who know how to do this are more than willing to pass on their information and teach others how to do this.

The thing I found most helpful was making sure I kept the strips of wood moist. I kept a water bottle handy at all times so I could keep the pieces I was working on wet.

When you are first starting out, you are a little slow and your pieces of wood can dry out pretty quickly. Once you get the hang of it, it goes much faster and you don't have to use the spray bottle as often.

I now have these two rocking chairs on my front porch, and they look like they are sturdy enough to last for several more years.

If you are interested in learning how to cane a chair, I would recommend taking a class. Every so often I see this class offered in our local adult education class schedule.

I took this class years ago, and learned everything I needed to know about basic chair seat weaving.

There are also kits and videos you can watch online, but I found the class to be the most helpful. It really helps to have someone there who knows what they are doing to help you when you are first learning.

Once you get the basic steps down, it doesn't take very long to learn. This is something many people are no longer interested in, as they would rather throw an old chair away that needs caning instead of trying to repair it.