Well...maybe not ALL the furniture.... maybe just some of it...
During the early days of the pandemic when very little was known about how the Covid-19 virus spread, there was a somewhat overzealous suggestion that one should disinfect everything -- including furniture and groceries. For a very brief period, I took that to heart, lightly wiping the furniture, including some of the upholstery. This would probably have been fine had I used the less offensive homemade vinegar concoction, but instead I opted for disinfectant containing bleach. A few days of that and our anthracite-colored Ikea Poang chair cushions could only be
described as a weirdly variegated, tweedy blue-gray. In a word -- ick.
After nearly two years of putting up with the cushions, it was time to replace or recover them (see left.) As usually happens when pricing new covers, my mind wandered to my sewing machine and well...why not just make slipcovers that could easily be thrown in the wash?
Of course, the actual doing part is always more difficult than the thinking part. In the end, my Swiss thrifty side (AKA cheap) won out. I'd prevoiously made window shades out of Osnaburg, an inexpensive, durable, heavyweight unbleached cotton. The fabric store's Osnaburg felt flimsy and ordering online meant more waiting, so I ended up with a piece of very wide cotton upholstery fabric resembling muslin from the "red dot" sale rack.
That was my only real mistake in this project. Any good seamstress knows better than to buy only part of a final bolt if there is a possibility one might need more fabric. Oops. After covering the first chair, I had enough fabric left to cover two footstool cushions but needed more for the other chair. Guess what? When I went back...it was all gone. In the end, I settled for unbleached drill fabric that looked
identical to the other, but was about half as wide. In the end, I did some fancy piecing on the backside of the cushion -- visible only if some nosey parker decided to flip the cushion over. To make washing the slipcovers easy, I lapped the fabric on the back side and tacked it down. Those can easily be removed before washing, and retacked afterword. I could have used buttons or velcro, but this worked well.
The success of this project makes me want to cover all of the upholstered furniture with the same fabric. I love the look of a light-filled room with most of the furniture covered in washable off-white cotton slipcovers. For one thing, the fur left by our oversized white cat would be less obvious and stains would be much easier to remove.
Some day...