How to cover a sofa with your own hands

Every home has a favorite sofa, where the whole large family gathers, receives guests, or just relaxes with a book and a cup of coffee or tea. This important upholstered furniture in an apartment becomes unusable over time, but often the owners do not want to part with it. In this case, you should resort to a procedure such as reupholstering the furniture upholstery with your own hands - this is a simple and quick process. The sofa will find a second life and will delight you with its updated look and individual decor.

The advantages of upholstering a sofa with your own hands

An aid in the upholstery process is the high-quality and durable base of the sofa - old Soviet or imported furniture is considered much better than that which is currently being produced. You can choose the material to your liking - the decor will be individual in any case.

When starting to replace the upholstery at home, repair the frame or spring block of the sofa as necessary. By doing this work yourself, you save a significant amount of money, because buying new furniture will cost more.

Design selection

The decor of the sofa when covering it will always be individual and depends only on the owner’s imagination; you can sew a new cover, make bright thought pillows or a cape with a blanket of an original shape, color and design.The furniture will sparkle with new colors and give the interior exclusivity.

IMPORTANT! The reupholstery may be partial, for example, you will need to replace only some parts of the sofa with more colorful elements.

The currently popular patchwork technique made from different pieces of fabric looks very beautiful. An applique on any theme will also look unusual - it is glued to the upholstery.

You can upholster furniture with faux leather or fashionable denim. Often people choose leatherette, velor, faux fur on a durable base, jacquard, tapestry. If you need removable covers, they can be easily sewn from clothing fabrics.

Required materials and tools

Before starting the sheathing, choose the fabric: color, with or without print, artificial or natural material. There is plenty of furniture in stores; there is plenty to choose from.

Some tips for choosing fabric for upholstery:

• it is undesirable to buy artificial, rough and synthetic material;
• You should not purchase crumpled-looking material;
• to reduce cash costs, you can prefer a fabric with a small print or a plain material, as it is easier to cut;
• To add softness to the upholstery material and increase the comfort of subsequent use of the sofa, you can use foam rubber or padding polyester.

IMPORTANT! The smell of the upholstery should not be unpleasant.

Necessary materials and tools for work:

• textile;
• foam;
• piping for closing seams;
• padding polyester;
• zipper;
• needles, sewing machine, threads;
• hammer, screwdriver, stapler, stapler, staples and scissors;
• sewing chalk, glue.

How to properly cover a sofa - step-by-step instructions

Beginners in this business often make mistakes that cost them wasted money and time. The main problem is the incorrectly calculated amount of fabric for upholstery. It’s a shame when you buy expensive fabric, but there isn’t enough of it and there is no such fabric in the store anymore. Therefore, you need to take the calculations for the upholstery fabric seriously and take with a small margin, let there be an extra piece left, but the sofa will be reupholstered without problems and from the remaining fabric you can make a cover for a chair or just sew something. To determine the amount of material needed, add the length and width of the furniture and multiply the resulting amount by 2. It is more difficult to determine the amount of fabric for covering corner sofas, since their shape is non-standard.

For trouble-free reupholstery, you need to purchase a high-quality stapler and strong staples; this option is better than driving nails into new upholstery and will look neater.

It is not recommended to choose synthetics for upholstery. If you purchase a fabric with stripes or a large pattern, then it must be cut in the same direction, so the cost of fabric increases. Additional seam allowances are always taken into account. The ideal option is to purchase fabric with a large margin of about one meter. If the filling of the sofa is also changed, then choose padding polyester or foam rubber for filling. Buy foam rubber 25 mm thick and lay felt between the layers. There are parts in furniture that need to be tightly stuffed with foam rubber and this can cause difficulties in work. In this case, the foam rubber is wrapped in padding polyester, attached to the sofa and wrapped in upholstery fabric.

IMPORTANT! The foam rubber must be porous and of good quality, otherwise during use it will quickly settle and lose its properties.

The procedure for upholstering a sofa is simple, if you follow some tips:

1. Before the upholstery begins, the furniture is disassembled, the parts are marked, so that everything can be put back together correctly.
2. First, the sides and back of the furniture are removed, and the staples are disconnected with an anti-stapler.
3. The old upholstery is removed, as this is a future stencil for the new one.
4. Replace foam rubber, springs or other parts that need to be updated.
5. Using the removed upholstery, draw a stencil with chalk on new fabric with a margin of 5 centimeters and cut out all the details.
6. The parts are sewn together on a sewing machine.
7. Stretch the new fabric over the sofa and secure it with staples; in some places the fabric is placed on glue for strength.

After all the work with padding and upholstery of the sofa, they begin to decorate it. Bright pillows with prints or removable covers of various colors are added to the updated furniture. Now you can make these attributes yourself or just go to the store and buy what you like. Moreover, the choice nowadays is huge: there are water-repellent covers, with a protective coating against pets, and in general there are many options and models. If you don’t feel like decorating yourself or don’t have the necessary skills, then you should just cover the sofa with a beautiful blanket.

IMPORTANT! Upholstering pillows yourself is quite difficult and time-consuming; it’s easier to contact a specialized workshop - this way you can save time and money.

Upholstering a sofa is a rather exciting and interesting process, during which you can realize your imagination and transform the interior. If you do everything according to the rules, then you will have original furniture at home that will last for several more years and will delight your household with its appearance.