project #1 – the accent pillows

About two years ago, my in-laws dropped in for a visit and took a quick tour of our apartment. At that time, we only have a few things: a television on the floor, an air mattress in the bedroom, and two high chairs by the high counter for when we eat. The thing is, I had my eye on a lovely velvet, tufted white sofa from Macy’s. I knew that I had to have it and I was willing to save money for it. Unfortunately, my in-laws insisted that we needed a couch right now. They took us shopping and I was given three options to choose from. Of the three, sadly, I chose the one that I best saw fit for the time being… a micro suede brown couch with leather armchairs (faint yay). Which means, goodbye Macy’s sofa 😦

Fast forward to today. So after the pillows wore down and the brown couch started to irk me, I looked online to learn how to upholster a couch. It looked like it would be a challenge. After a couple of days I had a vision of what I wanted to do, and was very excited to get started. So I broke it into 3 mini projects:

1) Start small, cover the accent pillows
2) Next, cover the four large pillows with one complementary color to match
3) Finally, cover two large seat cushions, to finish the final product

To get started, I needed a sewing machine, which lividivvy so graciously lent me. Next, I picked out my fabric at Mary Jo’s Cloth Store which has a great selection. It reminded me of High Fashion Fabrics in Houston and I happily walked around and saw the fabric that I wanted for my accent pillows.

As you can see below, this is what I started with:

I felt that the pillow needed more volume, so I bought batting to give it some fluff, and wrapped it. I have made accent pillows before, and know all too well that if I do not reinforce my pillow somehow, the batting will get out of hand. It took forever to hold down the batting around the pillows (with needle and thread) -but I tell you, it was worth it! Afterwards, I took the fabric I had bought, and made it in a way where it was simple to sew, without any zippers, called “the pillow envelope.” I was starting small, and easy!

The result, ta-da! (BTW, the couch pictured is my friend’s white couch, which I used as a backdrop)

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