Rehabbing a Ottoman

Or how to do your own upholstering-- the sort of janky way I made up.

I have been sewing since I was a little girl. I have been applying what I know about regular sewing to upholstering lately. I inherited a really awesome couch that had some pretty severe cat damage. I fixed it. I patched it up, which no one seemed to believe I could do. And now it looks awesome, and is so much nicer than the couch I had before.

I don't like throwing things away that are still good. And I didn't have the money to get a new couch either.

I wanted to do the same thing to my ottoman foot stool thingy that was totally broken. I thought some people might like to know how to do such a thing. So this time I took pictures while I was doing it.

How I re-upholstered my ottoman and how you can do the same--

(If you want your upholstery to look pristine and professional, this is probably not for you. But if you want it to look kind of cool and arty, and you don't care that people can tell that you patched it, then this is the guide for you.)


This is my ottoman. It's made of vinyl. I could probably get another one for not too much, but I like this one. It's got the right amount of heft, and it's a nice size for me to rest my feet on while I'm sewing.


And this is why the ottoman needs to be recovered. Because it's got splits in the vinyl. Scratchy splits that itch at my legs while I'm trying to sew. Not very relaxing.


My materials. I had originally planned to get some batting like you would use for quilting, and then use that and the pink swirly material I use to patch the couch. The batting would give the ottoman a nice squashy feeling, and I felt like the swirly material, which is actual upholstery material, would be a little too flimsy and not thick enough on it's own. Then I saw this old towel which I was using to cover the a/c unit. And I thought, hell, why not just use that old towel instead of batting? Then I don't have to drive to the fabric store.

I cut the towel down to be a little bigger than the ottoman. I wanted to leave the rolled over lip at the top, cause I like how it looks, so I had to mark off where I wanted to cut. Which I did with a Sharpie.


Detail view. (Hi, mom! See, I'm wearing the slipper things you gave me at Christmas.)

I am also using straight pins stuck into the ottoman to keep the towel on straight. At this point, I was going to cut out the towel in a circle and then cut out the other fabric in a larger circle and do a bunch of other stuff I decided not to do because I really like the feel of the old towel on top of the ottoman. I think with something like a foot stool, how it feels on your feet and legs is really important. Also, I think that matching is overrated, so I don't care that I didn't use exactly what I used when I did the sofa.


This is a picture of me fake putting on glue with my left hand even tho I am not left handed. I took the pins out (but not all of them-- I want to keep everything straight and not twisted around) and spread glue on the ottoman. I took my finger and smoothed it out so it wouldn't soak through the towel and be gloppy. The glue is meant to act like interfacing would with a liner-- you're going to sew down the edges, but you want something to prevent the middle from getting weird and bunchy.


This is me sewing the edges down. I was looping over the lip of the ottoman and pushing up back through the vinyl. This is what I mean about people being able to tell that you patched it. I consider the stitching to be decorative. I'm using a straight needle here. I tried using a curved upholstery needle like I used for the couch, but it didn't really work. Also, and I cannot stress this enough-- if you are trying to push a needle through something thick like vinyl, use a thimble. If you don't, you will probably end up with the back end of a needle in your hand somewhere. This is painful.

I also had to ease the towel around the edge of the ottoman. If you're not super familiar with sewing, easing is something you have to do when you're dealing with circle things. Cause fabric doesn't tend to want to lie down in circles. Squares and straight edges are easy. Circles not so much.

So when you're sewing a circle thing down to something else circle-ish, you will have to adjust the fit as you go around, making micro-changes while you are going, because the process of sewing the circle down changes the fit of what you're doing, while you are doing it. If this makes any sense.

You can also run a basting stitch that you can pull on the tail of to adjust while you're going. I didn't do that. I could have, but I figured I could fudge it. And I did.

The finished product. Yay! I like it so much!

You might want to do this in sections over a couple of days. It took a not short period of time to do.

Foxy likes it!