slip cover tutorial – WhatTheCraft

July 2, 2012October 18, 2018Tutorials

How to Sew a Slipcover, Part 3 – DIY Home Decor Tutorial

Homestretch, dudes and dudettes!

If you need them, here are links to Part 1 and Part 2 of this tutorial.

Step 1

Now that you have all your muslin pattern pieces traced and cut out of your Real Live Slipcover fabric, sew it together! Match up the guide lines you’ve marked and Do It To It.

Now slap that baby on the couch for a test fit.

Here’s the back and sides of mine getting a test fit on the ol’ coucheroo.

If you’re adding piping to yours, I find it’s easiest to sew the piping to the most awkwardly shaped piece first. So for my arm piece, I sewed the piping to the front arm piece, then I sewed the piece that wraps aroooound the arm to the piped front-arm-piece. Get it?Read more…

April 15, 2012October 18, 2018Tutorials

How to Sew a Slipcover, Part 2 – DIY Home Decor Tutorial

Part 2, FINALLY!

I know, I move at turtle speed sometimes.

Part 1 is here if you need it.

So let’s get started. Here’s my naked couch, stripped of all it’s cushiony goodness. (It seems weird that this is the first photo of the actual couch I’ve posted. Kinda dumb, in hindsight.)

Step 1

Last time I told you to go collect some thrift store sheets to use as a muslin, yes?

You COULD forgo the muslin and use these steps on your actual fabric, if you like to gamble, or you’re super ballsy, or really confident. I’m usually all of those, but I still made a muslin. I really didn’t want to eff this up, so I went the safe route, but if you want to roll the dice, be my guest. You’re dangerous!

Grab a sheet and tack it to part of the surface of your couch. I’m going to start with the front of one arm.

You can just stab some pins through the sheet so it lays flat. Or if you don’t want to put pins in your couch for some reason, I suppose you could use tape or something like that.

You can ignore all the marks for now. When you have it laying nice and flat and even, trim around it, leaving a good seam allowance PLUS extra. 3 inches would be good for now. Mine has already been trimmed… otherwise it would’ve just looked like a mess of a sheet draped over the arm of my couch.

We’ll trim it down more when we’ve got it all pinned and fitted.

Step 2

Choose another surface that abuts (hehe) the piece you’ve already pinned and trimmed. In my case, I’m going to do the piece that wraps all the way around the arm.

Pin it in place the same way I did with the front of the arm. Now, start pinning the two pieces together where they meet. It’s usually best to start at the center (in my example, I started pinning at the top of the arm) of the soon-to-be seam. Avoid puckers, you want nice clean seams. Some designs might require some darts or gathers, you’ll have to figure out what works best for your piece of furniture.

Pull the pieces taught, but not so tight that you stretch the fabric out of whack and wind up with wonky muslin pattern pieces.Read more…

March 16, 2011October 18, 2018Tutorials

How to Design and Sew a Slipcover, Part 1 – DIY Home Decor Tutorial

So you’ve got a perfectly comfortable, functional couch… it just looks like hell. With a custom made slipcover, no one will know what evil is lurking underneath all that handmade awesomeness!

We scored a couch, loveseat, and chair set at a secondhand furniture store when we first moved in. The upside is that it’s the most comfortable couch I’ve ever had the pleasure of napping on. The downside is that the couch takes quite a beating, especially from our two cats. It also doesn’t help that we’re total movie and tv junkies, so we spend a lot of time EATING on it. So even though it was in Like New condition when we bought it, five years later… not so much.

I’d been thinking about slipcovering it for a while, and once Spring Fever hit me, I decided now was the time to do it.

Step 1
I decided on the fabric first. Actually, I decided on the fabric, and then I started doing rough estimates of cost and started asking myself if it was worth it. I even decided I wouldn’t make my own. I started looking at some of the “cheap” slipcover options (meaning not custom made and under $200, which was my estimated fabric budget). I liked none and all had mediocre-to-bad reviews, so I made the final decision that DIY was the way to go.

I saw a commercial a few years ago that featured two women sitting on a couch that was covered or slipcovered in a sort of crazy quilt type patchwork. I fell in love. I was initially going to cover each surface with a different print (left side plaid, right side polka dot, one cushion in damask, another cushion in stripe), but after doing a few sketches I decided to scale it back. It was looking busier than I wanted, and would have required more extra fabric/expense to do it that way. I decided I’d do the base of the couch in one fabric, the cushions in another, and the back pillows in a third fabric.

To choose my fabric, I did a few sketches on the computer, inserting various Home Dec fabrics I found online, until I found the ones I liked. After I sketched it out, I decided to also do the backs of the pillows in a different fabric.