Fabric to Brighten up the Family Room

Although  I prefer to work with fabric I dye myself, I am not immune to the lure of beautifully patterned fabric. It should not surprise you that I sew my own slipcovers – it’s that whole necessity is the mother of invention thing. All of the furniture in my family room (that’s attached to the kitchen) has been slipcovered – for quite awhile. The large couch I covered in a brown ultrasuede type fabric, with colorful cushions.The love seat is covered in cotton duck I dyed brown. After a couple of years, the colorful cushions were decidedly worse for wear, and after redoing the living room last summer, the family room looked even dingier by comparison. The brown couches were themselves fine, but the throw pillows and 2 desk chairs the kids have were crying out for help. Combine that with a sale at J Caroline and I was able to buy some really fun  home dec weight prints designed by Jessica Jones (of the “How about Orange” blog).

So, waaaaay back last August I whipped up some new pillows and dyed some green canvas to recover a very dingy footstool. The solid color textured pillows are from the previous re-cover…they pick up enough of the colors in Jessica’s prints that I could justify keeping them all together. (Sigh, look at all those cords…this is as clean as this room ever gets, and it still looks cluttered because of it!) (But ah, that flatscreen made all the difference this is such a side, shallow room that a regular size TV was a serious PITA here, this was my Christmas present 2 Christmases ago..although I’ve watched this TV a total of like 4 hours…)The boys’ desk is on the other side of this room, and there chairs got a recover too:
Just the punch and color we needed. I now tell you that because I didn’t prewash and dry the fabric, and I spaced out when I put these covers in the dryer and they dried all the way today, the 2 chair covers no longer fit properly 🙁

Just in case we haven’t all learned this lesson yet: Prewash and dry fabric BEFORE making a slipcover (see – yet another reason to love hand dyed fabric – all that shrinking has LONG happened…) Sigh. No pix, too depressing, I’m hoping they’ll stretch and not rip when the boys sit in them.

I wonder what I’m doing this summer???