Another project over!

I had been looking askance at our sofa cushions since we moved back here. They were a horrible, office-chair blue, pilling all over, stained  and even torn in a few places where the kiddos had been rough on them. When I told my DH about setting my hand to sewing new ones, he VERY KINDLY reminded me that one of our rooms was still missing curtains - a project that I had started a year ago! Hmm... so I promised him that I would get them done, and we went shopping for material on the 25th of June (timelines are very important here!). I chose a beautiful russet fabric with raised design that looked tough enough to last through two boys' childhoods (being very optimistic has always been a failing of mine) and then I went a step ahead and chose a contrast fabric for covering some non-existent cushions - which had my DH totally puzzled. The first thing I did on the 26th was to sit at home and sew curtains for the last room in the house - this is the result

With that out of the way, I started on the sofas. My plan was to stitch slipcovers that covered the whole of our cane furniture to save them from further damage - for two days I measured, cut, stitched, picked the stitches and basted to get this - 

It felt all along as though the material itself was fighting me and refused to be a slip cover. I grew discouraged and lost sleep trying to figure out a way to make the whole look good. On the second night, it hit me! I could either make clumsy and slipshod slipcovers or I could make good fitting covers for just the cushions. Once I made the decision, within two days, everything came together. On the third day, I cut up two cotton stuffed pillows, sewed up the ragged edges by hand and covered them with fabric to make these...

I just fell in love with that fabric when I saw it. I would've covered the sofas with it had not DH asked me to imagine what it would look like after our kiddos got at it. Sigh... so I had to make do with it on just the cushions. So here is our newly covered sofa set...

I rewarded myself for finishing a project so quickly by stretching out on the newly covered sofa to watch the season finale of Castle on July 1. Not bad for a queen of procrastination, huh? The kids look happy with it too...

I used up two spools of thread! That's how much sewing I did! And look at my poor pins that were twisted out of shape trying to hold on to the heavy fabric!

By the way, has any one come across the tip that advises you to sharpen your dressmaking shears by cutting up sandpaper with it? It's total bosh, as I discovered last week :-( Fortunately I had a standby pair on hand!