Sofa Reveal

January 30, 2012

Well, I did it! I finished the mini-makeover on my sofa. It came down to the wire today. I was beginning to think it was going to be impossible, but the mission has been accomplished!

Before I show the results, I would just like to thank all the lovely ladies who put this linky party together:

Without further adieu, here is the new look:

I grossly underestimated the amount of time it was going to take to make these pillows and to paint the piping on the sofa. I figured I could bust out each pillow in a few minutes, have plenty of time to paint the piping, and be good to go by lunch time (I basically did all this starting at about 8 AM Monday). Um…yeah…I skipped lunch and barely made dinner before Kevin was starving to death.

Here’s another look at the sofa before I cracked out the fabric and paint:

The back pillows were getting deformed and lumpy, and the color was just so blah. I started by taking the back cushions off (which was easy because they weren’t even attached).

Next I set off to make four 26″ square pillows with custom piping. The fabric I selected was very thick and I had a lot of issues with the thread I used. I had a few seams that looked very professional:

Definitely not normal, but luckily no one sees this once the pillow is right side out! This didn’t start happening until pillow #3, and at that point I really didn’t care….I just wanted to finish!

I decided to fill the pillows with the filling from the existing back pillows and one bag of additional filling. It took a considerable amount of time getting the new pillows to not look lumpy (all you have to do is pull the lumps apart, but that takes forever). I did the filling this way to save money; euro sized pillow forms are about $20-30 each. So basically I saved $80-100 dollars (sweet).

So, finally the pillows were done….

Then, against my better judgement I decided to paint the existing piping on the seat cushions and sofa arms. I just didn’t like how worn the current piping looked, and I thought painting it brown would make the new fabric look better.

I started off using painters tape, but I ended up using a straight piece of cardboard held against the piping as I painted. I found the cardboard to be easier and a little bit faster than using tape.

All in all, the piping turned about better than I expected.