Navy Blue Velvet Sofas and An Upholstery Project

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I found a camel back sofa (at a thrift store) that I saw as a diamond in the rough and I've been working on it for over a year. It's no biggie. Not! This project doesn't settee well with me, but I've learned a tons (see what I did there?). Here are a few pictures to show you where things are with the project, but first I want to show you some pretty images of navy blue velvet sofas that inspired me to continue with this project.

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Emily Henderson

I love the rich color and texture of velvet. 

The frame was in good shape but it needed a new covering. I put it in our library by the bookshelves because I have this vision of my kids studiously reading Homer's Odyssey on a cold winter's day and there's no finer place to do that than on a blue velvet sofa! Actually, the real reason is that we didn't have anything else in there yet (except our piano). I looked up how much fabric I would need to recover this sofa using this chart:

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For the camel back I needed twelve yards. When I started my search for navy blue velvet it was not easy to find. Fabric.com and JoAnn's carry velvets but not the navy. I ended up finding some beautiful velvet on ebay for $12/yard!! That is a great price compared to what I found on other sites. 

Here's a nice process picture for you, stuffing and all. It takes a long time to pull out all the staples from the original covering and the sofa has pretty much looked like this for the past year.  Luckily, I've had some good friends come help me (more like I begged and bribed them to come over and help), which made the process fun.

Here she is now, looking a bit more recovered (here's another one) but still more to go. Sofa, so good (okay, I'll stop with the puns!). This beauty is almost done! I'll show you how it looks soon and blog about the things I've learned about upholstering furniture.