Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Remember from this post I was a bit of a scab forager during the last junk day that we had and I found two great bits.

The first one

It now sits in my sons room. It makes a perfect bedside table - best part about it, it was FREE!!!!


The second score was the foot stool/ottoman. The original fabric was daggy, but it was in great condition

Re-covering upholstery is easy - and the difference is makes is unbelievable.  Rather than just show you the end product I thought I would show you some of the steps I took to recover it.

I bought 3 yards of fabric (yard works out at about 91cm) to re-cover the ottoman.  I allowed myself a bit extra in case I had any mishaps.  Thankfully I didn't and I have some left over.

I tipped the ottoman over, and there was a black piece of fabric covering all of the staples etc.  Once I unscrewed the feet, I ripped off the black fabric covering to reveal the guts of the ottoman.

Next to come off was the cover.  I wanted to keep the majority of it in-tact so that I could use the original cover as a template.  There were hundreds of staples holding the cover tight - so I would have been there all day trying to remove them all one-by-one, so I ended up cutting the cover as close to the staples as I could. Once I had cut the cover away from the wooden base, I carefully pulled off the cover as to not damage the foam

I pulled apart the original cover so that I could use it as a template to make the new cover.  Don't make things hard for yourself by measuring - just use what you already have.  It will save any mishaps as you know that the original cover fits!

The piping was the only thing that made it a little bit more difficult for me.  I don't have a piping foot for my sewing machine. It would have been easier with one. It would have been a very quick project if I had forgone the piping and just stayed with the fabric, but I wanted the contrast with the black piping.

The fabric that was originally on the ottoman was home-decorating weight - which in layman's terms it is thicker than normal fabric so it can stand up to a lot of use.  The fabric that I chose was regular quilting cotton, so a lot thinner than home-decorating fabric.  I made up a second cover, this time in calico that went over the ottoman first to give a bit of stability and then the other cover went over after.

After you pull the cover over the ottoman - and believe it it is a struggle.  That thing is tight. You need to then secure the fabric to the underside of the ottoman. I use a staple gun and then hammer in the staples afterwards to make sure it is nice and tight.  The underside does not need to be pretty as you get to cover it up with another piece of fabric. In my case I recycled the bottom and feet that was originally on the ottoman.

And the finished product

I am debating whether to get a piece of glass cut for the top, but in the mean time I am happy looking at my new ottoman that was FREE!! apart from the fabric to recover it.