Chairs that eat your clothes

I have patio furniture that causes an unusual problem. They chew up the back of your pants. The seats are made of woven 1" wide wrought iron lattice with about 1" between the slats. Something about those woven slats can catch your pants legs as you sit down or get up and make little tears. I have never had this problem before! So I hied myself off to Hancock's today to buy a couple of yards of indoor-outdoor fabric on sale, 40% off, to make chair seat covers. I don't want chair pads with foam inside because it takes them so long to dry after a rain. I'll just make a reversible seat cover with corner ties (not even any piping, not in the mood). I've never worked with this kind of fabric - it looks like it'll be worse than sewing through steel wool. I bought an upholstery needle, just in case.