Monday 21 January 2013

Reupholstering a Sofa - My Mini Tutorial


Above is the photo of my Sofa Makeover! I reupholstered my sofa and a chair all by myself - I have never done this before and I was really pleased with the results! I now have a new sofa nad chair and it cost me nothing!

If you follow my blog you might already know that I recently changed the decoration of my Living Room to a theme colour of Gold and Black. My Sofa and chair had seen much better days and they were quite damaged.  I was actually using throws over them to disguise the bad condition! I had some old gold coloured curtains that I no longer used stored away that I used for this project!

Below is a close up of the leather, as you can see it was worn and discoloured!
Buying new furniture was out of the question at this time (Have you seen the price of new ones!). I also really love these as they are really sturdy and have great room underneath where I can keep storage boxes hidden away and the sofa is large enough to use to sleep on for emergency visitors!I had quite a lot of gold coloured fabric in storage from some curtains I used to have so decided to make use of this to save me some money!

This was a fairly easy job for me because my sofa and chair have a wooden frame with removable cushions.  The only hard part were the arm rests, the easiest part was to make new sofa cushion covers.

Quick Steps on how I did this:

I removed the cushion covers from the cushions, some were slightly different sizes. I took the leather apart and made paper patterns for all the pieces. I then used the paper patterns to cut out new fabric. It is handy to take photos of each cushion and maybe label the paper patterns so you remember which piece goes where.

Once I had the fabric pieces cut, I stitched the pieces together to make a new cushion cover. I actually took the zips from the original cushion covers and re-used them again for the new covers as they were in decent condition! (Saved me more money!)

The arms of the chair and sofa came out and slotted back in. If you look closely at the shape of the arm rests you will notice the new ones are a completely different shape!  I decided to change them to a bolster cushion shape!  I had to use some extra wadding - which luckily I already had in the house.  (Again saved me money!)
I have never made bolster cushions before, so I copied an online tutorial to make these. I had to make sure I left some stitching open underneath the bolster cushion to attach them to the arm rest supports. Once attached I then had to hand stitch the gap that I had left. Then I placed the arm rests back in place. I much prefer the bolster look than the original ones.  Here is a great link to the tutorial that helped me: Youtube Bolster Cushion tutorial

I made some of the cushion covers from some other fabric that I had. The 3 centred cushions on the sofa were actually gifts from my family. I did spend some money and buy some of the other cushion covers to match with the sofa.

Below is an old photo of when this fabric used to be my curtains! PS: These were one of the first curtains I ever made when I first got my sewing machine! I took this photo as I had planned to sell my 'Gazelle' so needed a photo of it.

In case you missed my other post regarding the room re-decoration below are the photos: Black/gold projects






13 comments:

  1. Subhan`allah thats a really good job karima ... and the finishing ms shaa allah

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    1. Assalamualaikum, so glad you like it. I originally only had a couple of cushions but it looks better with the extra display cushions!

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  2. Brilliant! Your a skillful sister mashallah! Love it.

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    1. Glad you like - I am so pleased with it - as a first attempt I think it well really well.

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  3. Salam alaykum karima,

    Masha'Allah it went so well, now I need you to do mine!

    P.s. if you get this msg twice its because I wasn't sure my first one got through lol

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    1. waalaikum salam, thanks for your sweet comments!

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  4. ohh mashaAllah you really did a great job here :-D I love the pillows

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    1. Thank you so much, some pillows are handmade and some shop bought!

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  5. Glad you like, hope you are well.

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  6. MashaAllah you're really good at this, turned out really well

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    1. Thank you so much - I was really pleased with the final outcome!

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  7. Wow, mashallah, you did a great job! It looks fantastic!

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    1. Thank you for your sweet comment, I am really happy with the final look.

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