Sew Paint It
Wednesday, 25 December 2013
Seasons Greetings!
Now it is Christmas day and the presents have been opened and mostly played with and the best presents this year voted by child A and child B? Bucket of slime of course!
We have enjoyed our Christmas dinner and I for one enjoyed a nice nap.
It is raining here in Sydney but that is perfect because we can stay in and not feel bad about it.
I wish you many blessings and a safe and peaceful Christmas wherever you are.
I wonder if 2014 will be a more creative year with more homemade stuff than 2013?? See you then! x
Thursday, 30 May 2013
How to make Loose Sofa Covers
This is one of them finished!
I was so happy when I saw them that they are really square and so very easy to cover. I started with the cushions so we could actually sit on them. I reused the old zips. I went to my favourite local upholstery fabric shop and got the end of a roll for only $7 per metre to do the first sofa. I think it needed about 7 metres. Once I started I realised I wanted to do both in this fabric so I went back and bought enough for the other one. I had known they had another whole roll of that fabric when I bought the first piece. Total cost of fabric was $130. The fabric I got is cotton and polyester so it won't shrink and will be easy to wash and dry.
Here is one before - it was quite grubby. I thought it was not a very good idea to buy a white sofa without loose washable covers.
The old cushions were fixed in place with zips. I decided not to do this.
With the cushions done it was already so much better and we could sit on them. I just made them by using one large piece the width of the cushion which went all the way around. Then I cut side pieces and sewed them into a bag. I made the the cushion fitted in nicely and added the zip at the end.
Here is the cover inside out and still in pieces. I started by making the arms. I measured the height, depth and width required and cut out fabric with a generous seam allowance. So I cut side, front, top, back, and inner side pieces. I sewed them together and checked they fitted nicely. For the main part of the sofa I made a very large piece which needed a seam down the middle so I chose to do two seams as shown. To get it to fit I placed it on the sofa wrong side up as shown and cut the top/side pieces and tacked them on in situ. Then I removed it and machine sewed them.
When I was putting the top/side piece it had to go all the way down the back to make it fit.
Then I turned it over and basically felt good that it fitted and I was going to have a 'new' sofa. As you can just about see I sewed down each side of some of the seams on the front because I liked the look of it and I think it will be more robust if washed a lot and stop it from fraying.
Sewing the arms onto the main part was the hardest part and I tried to avoid puckering. I mostly managed it. Again putting the parts on the sofa inside out and tacking them together is one way to do it. These areas are covered by the cushions anyway and I guess this is why, a year later, only one of the two sofas is actually joined together into one piece here.
Finally I just hemmed it all the way around. I thought about getting velcro and sticking it to the underside of the sofa and I think this would have been better but I didn't do it. I think a lot of professional loose covers do this (e.g. ikea) and it does look great. I will do this next time.
I was honestly surprised at how quickly and easily these came together. I expect they took about 20 hours for both sofas. And I am so happy with the result. The cost was $2 petrol to collect them (very approximately), $130 fabric and $5 thread. Total = $137.
If you have a sewing machine, you could do this too. The hard part is finding the sofas in the first place which are a good shape to cover.
Labels:
covers,
cushion,
fabric,
loose covers,
reupholster,
sofa,
thread
Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
What is this blog about?
I love to sew and these are tiny hexagons
This is log cabins that I am going to make into a bag. I used a jelly roll from a shop in Tiptree in Essex! The shop is called The Cheap Shop for some strange reason.
I bought this on ebay for $5. It was really really heavy and we had to carry it up quite a lot of stairs and then put it on top of the car.
My husband took the top off and chopped off the top bit and put the lid back on. We left it like that for a few months.
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