Upcycling our sofa bed

*We were kindly gifted five metres of fabric for our upcycle project*

We "were" owners of an unsightly, ugly, uncomfortable sofa bed. It has been an embarrassment of ours for a while now, the black fabric was ripped (thanks Loki) and the foam was bulging out. We'd tried our best to cover it with throws and blankets but - it was in desperate need of upcycling.

Thankfully, the Yorkshire Fabric Shop came to my rescue and kindly gifted us five metres of blue soft chenille fabric from the Patricia range. The fabric arrives in a roll which is 140cm long - with a five metre width to it.

I also bought a staple gun, five metres of Dacron (which is a wadding) a Stanley knife and a can of instant spray contact adhesive. We had salvaged an old memory foam mattress and reused the foam to make our sofa bed more comfortable.

First things first, take off the old fabric and hoover the sofa.

The new foam was measured and cut to size using the Stanley knife and a cutting board. Then the Dacron was placed on top. This was all secured into place with the contact adhesive spray.

We are upholstering novices here - but we have watched tutorials before. The first thing to do is measure your lengths of fabric that you will need to cover each part of your sofa, making sure there is enough to pull around the edges. We had three separate pieces to cover and had to make sure each piece gave the correct coverage.

The fabric was cut using the cutting board, Stanley Knife and a metal ruler.

Once we were satisfied that we had the right measurements it was time to start stapling it onto the frame. For the underside of the sofa the feet were removed with a screw driver and then reattached afterwards.

To do the corners of the sofa the fabric was folded (like a birthday present) and then stapled into place. You could also use some upholstery tacks to finish and give a neat effect.

Just a couple of hours after we had started we had managed to revamp our ugly sofa bed. The chenille fabric is soft to touch, like velvet and when you brush it in different directions it has a lovely sheen to it.

We have a bolster cushion that I would like to cover - there are some lovely designs in the Freedom range - I particularly like this jungle leaf velvet.

Our dog is now not allowed to sit on the sofa at all. We are really happy with the finished result and I think I will add some more cushions soon. We have saved so much by upcycling our sofa bed - a new one would have set us back a lot of money!

Here's a before and after photo just for comparison. Not a bad job -eh?!