Couch Upholstery Project

I have been doing some upholstery projects lately, see! Here's the Before and After.

I really love this couch and love seat; it was my grandmother's she got in in the early nineties I guess. Then it was passed down to my mom, so my brother sister and I slobbered all over the couches and gave them a good bit of ware. Mom covered the seat cushions and arms with some gray-ish stripped material. When I finally got the love seat and couch, it was worse for the wear, but still pretty comfortable. I really didnt like the back pillows, they always looked very sloppy no matter how you tried to arrange them.

I knew I wanted to re-upholster the couches in a navy blue color (dark, minimal dirt to show).

 

One day I was at Surplus City and found THE FABRIC I was looking for, a modern navy blue fabric with a olive and lighter blue wave pattern. The only downfall was there was only 4 yard of 54 inch wide fabric. My challenge was to make this fabric stretch to cover a couch and a love seat. If any of you have looked at yardage estimates for upholstering couches like mine, 16 yards are needed. Fortunately the local JoAnne Fabrics Store had a blue color fabric to compliment the wave pattern; I also got a wood grain fabric in the same blue color. The trim is from Surplus City for $0.69 a yard (I used 36 yards to trim everything).

Since I did not like the old cushions Surplus City had 24x24x4 High Density foam for $13 a piece. I found 3 fit nicely on the couch and 2 fit well on the love seat... yeah!

My attack plan was to make the back cushions with the modern fabric and the rest of the couch would be covered in the plain. I used cording around all of the seams to show some contrast on the couch and to give it a bit of definition.

Before I could upholster the seat cushions I removed 2 upholstery jobs my mother did (I forgot about this white-ish lining she covered some holes with. Then I removed the original cover, and then I vacuumed and beat the cushion so it wasn’t so icky.

I made some sleeves for the side of the couch and stapled them on. For the bottom of the couch I originally wanted to put a very long and wide bullion fringe around the bottom to avoid upholstering the thing. Too bad that plan wasn't followed through. I never found any affordable bullion fringe that I liked, they were too short (it needed to be at least 8 inches), or the wrong color I wanted the blue, but I would have settled on olive. None the less I got sick of the old couch showing through for a month, so I used the rest of the fabric to make skirts for the couches. I just stapled them on the couches. Volia!