As you might see from the snapshot to the left, I once had a very cheap and wonderfully tacky brown tweed couch. We obtained said couch from a friend of ours who has been known to be a bit, shall we say, wild. Unfortunately, I was so unhappy with the fabric and condition of the couch, and acted so quickly, that I don't have ny really good "before" pictures, so you will have to use your imaginations. Imagine this lovely brown twead couch has been passed down from distant aunt to niece, survived four years in a dorm room, moved to CO, dragged up and down several different narrow apartment staircases, and switched hands until it was in the possession of my aforementioned friend of ill-repute, wherein it lived in a poorly ventilated garage for a year before we inherited it. |
After I finished the cushions, I took remaining scraps of fabric and individually covered the arms of the couch. I decided pretty early on that it would be too much work to strip the remaining tattered fabric of the couch so I instead covered over it. I stapled the individual pieces of fabric to the wooden frame using a heavy duty staple gun... |
Next, I had to tackle the backrest...I'd been avoiding it since I wasn't sure how cover the three cushions with their separate lumbar supports; and I wanted to preserve the original detail without going through the effort of adding piping and individually stiching each cushion. Plus I didn't really have a good way to secure the covers, as mentioned, stapling only works if there is something hard to be stapled--eventually I decided on the following plan: I cut individual squares of fabric for each of the two back cushions for each section of the the couch. I then handstiched the two squares together, and the three pieces together so that they would line up against the backrest. I stapled the top of each cover to the back of the couch and allowed the bottoms to be draped over the backrest where they can be tucked into the cushions and into the sides of the couch. |
...and voila! Good as new and hardly a dollar spent. As an addendum, I would like to point out that the loosely woven fabric is pretty hard to work with, since it resists cutting (frays very easily) and stretches more than it probably should. Also the color has faded a bit, but that is to be expected with two dirty dogs. All in all, I am satisfied, and proclaim it--good enough. |