Using a Leather Skirt to fix an Antique Chair

A couple of weeks ago I was shopping at Switch Boutique, a cute clothing consignment store in Louisville, CO, and I found this fantastic green/gold leather skirt from the GAP that I just had to have. Plus it was $13 and 100% leather. Score.  I tried it on and it didn't fit.  Sadly I skulked to the rack to put it back, when I had a thought,  I am going to use this leather and make something fantastic out of it like a pillow or chair cover or something. 

I found this fabulous old antique chair at 8th & Pearl Antiques in Boulder, CO.

This is what I did.

I got cardboard and drew an outline of the chair seat hole to make a template and then cut the template out of the cardboard.

 Then I traced the template onto a beg board (you could use particle board).

 Then I got to use the jigsaw and cut out it. By myself.  I made sure to leave about a half inch extra all the way around so the wood sits on top of the chair hole.

 Fits perfectly.

 Then I needed to create a way to secure the wood insert it in the chair hole so I cut out 4 squares and glued them to the 4 corners on the inside of the wood.

 I bought a chair pad form at Hobby Lobby.  Make sure it is only 1" thick. I made the mistake of buying a 2" one and it was too thick and ended up having to thin it out with scissors, which was a major pain.  I secured the form on the peg board seat using toothpicks by poking them through underneath.  Then I cut the leather leaving about 2 inches of overlay on each side.  I folded the leather under and used furniture tacks to secure it in place.  The wood was incredibly hard and pounding the nails in was terribly difficult.  This was the only part where Paul had to help, but I will say I did about 99% of the project.

 What do you think?  Ta-da.