The Very Ugly Sofa: Before and After

For my other home decorating project, I decided to tackle our unattractive, uncomfortable sofa. I really wanted to pick up a nice slipcover while we were at IKEA, but (see mention in previous post about dragging kids through IKEA) I didn't have a chance to look. But based on previous experience looking at slipcovers for this sofa, I'm pretty sure that they would have been more than I wanted to spend.

But I REALLY needed to do something with the sofa. I don't know how to fix uncomfortable, but there must be SOMETHING I could do about the ugly. When you look at it, the back and arms are in decent shape, it's mostly the cushions that are so awful.



Notice the stains left by 8 years of children's spills.



Also the shredded upholstery and stuffing poking out of the cushions.

It's even worse when you flip the cushions over.

And then I had an idea. I didn't need to cover the whole sofa, just the cushions. I've tried before to cover them up by tucking a flat sheet around them, but it always pulls loose. But what if I made a cover for the cushions? So I went looking for fabric and ended up buying some cheap flat sheets. It was actually cheaper to buy a couple of flat sheets than if I'd just bought the fabric I needed. Plus this way, all the edges are nicely finished already. I even found some in a perfect shade of eggplant that goes nicely with the purple walls in my living room.

It was super easy. I just folded the sheets to fit snugly around my couch cushions, pinned it, and sewed a grand total of 4 seams (2 for each cushion cover). It basically made a big pillowcase-like pouch. Then I slipped the cushions inside. It took about 10 minutes altogether. That's about all the time I can squeeze out for projects around here.

It's not perfect, but it looks a lot better than before!

About 5 minutes after the kids got home (and approximately 2 minutes after I had given them the rules about no spilling anything on the new cushion covers), we had our first spill on the new cushion covers. *sigh*

Luckily it was just water, so it dried just fine. And if we're not so lucky with the next spill (because there's sure to be a next spill), I'll be glad I left the back edge open so it's easy to pull the covers off and toss them in the washing machine!