"New" Couch

Thanks to my lovely, wonderful mother, my couch has been re-upholstered!

We bought a brand new flexsteel couch years ago when Hannah was just a few months old. Not thinking anything of it, we picked out a red couch. It was covered in a wannabe micro fiber type material. We loved the red but the plainness did nothing for camouflaging messes.
Fast forward about 6 years and we were the owners of a well built but really dilapidated looking couch. Every stain showed and you could see the strain on the fabric from the couch enduring four rambunctious children. The fabric on the cushions was starting to fray and there where a few places that my children could get their fingers in and remove stuffing. Not good.

(Notice the couch behind my sleeping handsome boys.)


(I'm horrible at taking "before" pictures...so I had to search hard for these two, the one with Ivan in the helmet is from a year ago and notice the nasty stains on the arm of the couch.)

It needed help, badly.

Now, I have attempted a few re-upholster jobs in my brief history but all my "jobs" where cheap chairs I found at the dump re-sale shop, so it didn't matter if I got it right or not. But my couch...no way, not by myself.

So I called my mom. "Mom, will you help me re-cover my couch?"

Without hesitation she said yes. My mom is awesome. And also she has quite a bit more experience re-upholstering things. She knows what she's doing and she's good.

Back in October I went to Fabric Depot and found a great upholstery fabric for $7 a yard, and bought all that they had left; I think it ended up being about 18 yards. I wanted to be on the safe side ('cause it's not like I could run out and buy more mid-project). It's textured and patterned and will hide stains well.


And the fabric has been waiting in my craft closet until my mom purchased the pneumatic stapler she wanted and found the time to come help me. Though as it turns out, I mostly helped her...

She got here Sunday night and Monday morning after the kids and I did a little schoolwork we got to work taking the couch apart.


The key is to take it apart slowly and use the old pieces as patterns.


We got it all taken apart and the main body of it, except for the back, put together again on Monday. Erik even helped with the stretching, pulling and stapling. And then Tuesday we spent working on the cushions. My mom did all the sewing, so I did most of the taking apart of old cushions, so we could use the piping and zippers, and the cutting out of new pieces.

The back cushions used to be attached, but I hated it. They were quite scrunched down and I hated not being able to turn them, so we didn't attach them this time. In doing so we discovered we didn't have enough piping to go around the "new" back cushions. So my mom checked at Creative Fabrics in Wheeler and Doris gave my mom the number for Jerry's Custom Upholstery in Bay City. I called and he said he would sell me some, so I hopped in the van and drove down there. I only needed 10 yards, so he just gave it to me! He said I paid more in the gas coming down, so just to take it! Lovely!

We finished last night at about 11:20pm.


I really like my "new" couch. My mom does good work.


And I did help some, and so did Erik. I have about 7 or so yards of material left! So maybe I went a little overboard with the fabric, but have no fear, I'm already planning a few projects for it.