A Cover Story

Thanks to the producers of Mollie Makes magazine issue 14 I finally got to cover a ghastly pouffe my partner insisted we kept as it belong to his mother. The original cover was a drab chocolate brown velvet circa 1970 that was starting to wear. I have been wanting to cover it for years but haven't had the know-how.

My first step was to strip away the old cover, so I took a pair of scissors to it with glee! Inside, all the padding was falling apart so I stripped that back too. I was then suprised to find that the pouffe itself was just made out of one big lump of polystyrene. Although thinking about it now I don't know what else it could be made out of. My partner has a massive aversion to polystyrene and ordered me to do something about it before he really freaked out. So I was banished out of the room until I sorted it out. I simply took the old padding and stitched it back around the polystyrene. I then got some spare cotton fabric that I had in my stash and wrapped it around the pouffe as if you were wrapping a circular gift, and put in some stitches to hold it in place.

Finally I could start working on the proper cover. The magazine provides instructions for producing a patchwork effect of 8 segments. I throughly enjoyed taking the measurements and drafting the pattern as it was something I haven't done before. I then popped along to Hobbycraft to see what gems of fabric could be found. I quite liked the style on the pictures in the magazine so that's what I aimed for when making my choice. They had a lovely basket full of Amy Butler fat quarters, out of which I picked the wavy stripes and the funny orange tree fabric. I then purchased half a metre of the green spotted fabric which is also Amy Butler. As you can see, I decided to use 3 different types of fabric instead of four like the magazine suggests, as I felt this offers a bit more consistency to the design. I also purchased some green and blue trimming to go along the top and bottom edge. The magazine features pom pom trimming which I would've like to have used but couldn't get any.

So here is my finished result. I am very pleased with it but the trouble is now the pouffe is so bright and colourful that it makes the rest of my living room look really drab!

Having completed the segmented version, I see no reason why it wouldn't be easy enough to cover a pouffe in just one sheet of fabric. You would just need to cut out two separate pieces, one for the top and a strip to go around the bottom according to your measurements and adding on 1cm for stitching it together. You could then trim it with any embellishment that takes you fancy.

Now, on to the next project!

Gingerrose x