A New Sewing Project - Making a Loose Sofa Cover

This week, I decided to start work on a new project to make a loose cover for a sofa that's been languishing in LB's bedroom for a while now.  She doesn't really use it, although the dog does sometimes sleep on it, and I think she'd rather have the space for a desk, now she's studying, so I'm planning to put it in the new shed/garden room, when it arrives and has been built.

Here's a picture of it:

We actually have two of these sofas, one of which is still in one of our reception rooms, but this one is looking a bit worse for wear, as the sun has discoloured the cover in places, hence why I thought I'd try and make a new one. I've completed a similar project before, during Lockdown, making a loose cover for an armchair, so I'm hoping it will turn out ok.

To cover it, I'm using a pair of black linen/cotton curtains I bought from a charity shop the other week for £8:

(They look dark grey in this photo, but are in fact black)

I've cut all the hems off, as they exhibited signs of wear and fading, but the main body of the curtains are fine and look virtually new.

They are pretty large and I was originally going to use the fabric for quilting, but I've decided to use it for this project instead, as it looks pretty hardwearing and should make the sofa look much better. It's not the most comfortable sofa, if I'm honest, but you can't always have everything and I'd rather renovate and re-use it than put it into landfill.

I started this project on Sunday night, by making a paper pattern for the two ends of the sofa and the back. It didn't need to be too accurate, as I will make each piece at least an inch bigger all around and then pin and hand tack all of the pieces together whilst they're actually on the sofa to get a good fit, before doing any machine stitching. Any excess fabric will get trimmed off once it's all machine sewn together.

The remaining pattern pieces for the arms, seat back and seat cushion are a bit more complicated to draft, as they are more irregular shapes, so I needed to allocate some time when I was in the right frame of mind to really concentrate and get them right.

I continued with making the sofa cover on Thursday, after getting home from the gym. I draped the fabric over the seat back and cut it to the right size using the fabric and I have done the same for one of the arms. I find that this is the easiest way to get the shape right, but I've already made a couple of small mistakes, which means I'll have to add some small bits of fabric between the seat back and the arm pieces. It should be doable. It's not a precise method, but it works for me.

I also cut the back and sides of the sofa cover out of the fabric, so that I knew how much fabric I had left and how best to use it. I've actually just got enough fabric to cover the base of the sofa and there will be none left to cover the seat cushion, which is a pity. 

To be honest, I'm not too worried about this, as I've been covering this with a throw for years, which tucks down the sides of the cushion neatly and I could do something similar for the time being, until I get some fabric that is as close a match as possible to this one. Besides, it doesn't need to be perfect, as it's going into the shed after all.

I spent a couple of hours working on the project on this occasion, but then called it a day. I have one more arm cover to draft and then the front pieces of the arms and base, before I can start pinning and tacking it all together.

Here's a picture of how far I got in this session:

I was quite happy with my progress. 

I'll post again about this project when I've made more progress.