This past week I have accomplished something major, for me! I sewed a slipcover for my IKEA Huset couch!!!
To me, the Huset... set... is iconic. So many doll collectors have it! Just looking at it transports me back in time, to a certain period on Flickr, admiring the roomboxes of those with collections that blew my mind.
As you can see, the couch comes with a slipcover in a very bubblegum shade of pink. Although I must note, the cover that came with mine doesn't fit nearly as well as the one in the product picture.
It used to be that there was at least one or two people selling covers for this specific doll couch on Etsy. Because of course! What an easy way to customize and have furniture that totally fits the look of a doll room! I bought a yellow gingham cover at some point. (You can see it in this dressup video with Mallow.) I could have sworn I had a second cover, but maybe not, as I cannot find a second one anywhere. But it's been many years since I last saw a Huset couch cover on Etsy, despite random searches over that time. Devastating!! I had always wanted to acquire many more covers!
However, debellespoupees on Etsy sells a Huset sofa cover pattern! I ambitiously bought this pattern a long while ago in the hopes of eventually being able to sew myself a new Huset slipcover. Like, this has been a long-held goal of mine. And many, many long years later, I have achieved this dream!
Although, not without immense mental pain and effort on my part, haha. My first attempt came together surprisingly well, in terms of construction, but I realized halfway through that I had cut the pattern pieces too small because I misunderstood the pattern instructions. I thought the seam allowance had been built in. (I tell you: I cannot sew, and the intricacies of construction do not come naturally to me. I lack the ability to envision a 3D shape and how every bit of it behaves and interacts as an end product.) It had not been built in, whoops! And I just misunderstood the wording of the pattern. So my first attempt ended up too small to fit the couch due to this error on my part.
I did my best, in my next attempt, to build in some seam allowance onto the pattern pieces. I did this with a ruler. But I'm an American so I didn't have a ruler with mm on it, when the pattern called for a 5 mm seam allowance. I said, "A quarter inch has gotta be close enough to 5 mm, right?" Well, maybe. But that allowance tacked onto every pattern piece combined with where exactly I was sewing my seams resulted in a cover that was far too large.
What a Goldilocks kind of problem, right? Going from a first attempt that was too small to a second attempt that was too big!
I attempted to save my hours of effort with this second cover by padding it out in additional places to give it some more structural integrity... I feel like you can see, between the first and second pictures above, that this idea did help ever so slightly! But also, I think it needs to be gathered on each side -- peep the sewing clips pinned there in the second picture.
I think if I were to make some bows or something and attach them there, gathering in the process, it could actually be cute, maybe! Who knows!
It's still wonky in its construction because everything I make is pretty wonky. It's literally asymmetrical, which is really irritating and something I can't really fix with padding. But I really like this fabric so I'd like to be able to rescue this too-large cover in some way.
This bright checked slipcover is attempt number three, and I'm pretty happy with this version! It is still a leeetle wonky, which is just down to me and my relative lack of skills. But it also is way better than my first two attempts, and I can't lie, I'm gagged that I pulled this off.
The fabric is from the craft section of Dollar Tree, which has fat quarters, though not a huge selection. It happens to be a fairly thick cotton (thicker than a quilting cotton) which added a tad more structure to this particular slipcover, so that's one reason I used it. It does seem a lot sturdier. I also just thought a checked pattern seemed suiting for a couch.
HONESTLY, even though the execution of the pattern is imperfect and the fabric wasn't my first or even second choice, I am so, so proud of myself. Just managing to complete this project and get something not-too-shabby in the end is, for me, a huge accomplishment. I think many people with sewing experience would find this pattern easy to understand and put together, but for me it was really challenging. Taking several swings at it, each attempt being hand-sewn and everything... whew. I really stuck with it. I must take pride in my mediocre sewing skills because I have truly slavishly raised them from subzero.
Another Dollar Tree thing: They had these mini wooden pallets and wooden craft cubes that I thought I could make into a coffee table-type thing! And dang!!! It's so cute! I wonder if I should attempt to stain/seal it, or if that would just be spending money for no good reason when it looks pretty cute as-is.
Other sofa cover notes:
- I added in yet another quarter inch of seam allowance along the bottom of each pattern piece because I wanted to be able to hem the cover. (I hemmed each piece individually, before joining; hence the hem doesn't line up exactly from one piece to another.) This wasn't in the pattern!
- I think the weight of the fabric actually does matter somewhat, for this. I found the thicker cotton behaved a lot better than the thinner cotton and it just seems like it will hold up better and not stretch or get super wrinkled. I guess you could use interfacing to add some structure if you really liked the pattern on a thinner fabric.
- I did not sew in the padding as the pattern instructed, either. I felt confounded by the mere idea. I actually saved the padding step for last, cut each bit down to shape directly to fit the exact area, and glued it in with Aileen's. I was pretty sparing and this seemed to work really well, although I can imagine sewing the padding in is much more secure and I might need to re-glue some spots in the future if the padding starts to come loose somewhere.
- I left off the little closure mechanism that goes beneath the cover -- at least, on the IKEA slip cover, there's a little strap with velcro on it that could help keep the cover in place. I didn't feel like it was necessary... although it admittedly intrigues me...
I think I will give this pattern yet another attempt, not only to see if I can improve even more in my construction of it, but to give myself a couple more options in terms of vibes. I have had dreams the last two nights in a row about sewing this pattern...
