My Big Ugly Couch

So I've got this couch. When my Gigi moved into a smaller place around the same time I was moving into a bigger one, my parents snagged me one of her extra couches and brought it down to Southern California for me. It's big and comfy and long enough for a grown up person to sleep on comfortably. It's the best nap couch I've ever had. It's lived through parties (as evidenced by a wine stain or two), moves, and more than one all nighter of data analysis with me. But the truth is, the things I love about this couch end there.

It's a good couch, don't get me wrong, but it's kind of ugly. Big pink and sage palm leaves, ugly. Fringe with the texture of matted dog hair, ugly. Maybe for someone with a beachy, artsy house, like Gigi had, it would be just the ticket, but the leaves were really cramping my style. 

In my last apartment, with warm orange-tan walls, the colors didn't look quite so dingy. It was easier to incorporate the baby-poop-esque hues of the couch in a nice way. And even then, I tried to get it to match the rest of my house by gussying it up with orange plaid pillows as if to say, "I know this doesn't belong here, but lets pretend it does." But after my move, as I tried to coordinate yet another home with pink and sage green leaves, but this time on a white backdrop, I finally give up. I will no longer live with the ugly couch and its 8 ugly palm leaf pillows!

The good news for me is that quirky mis-matched pillows are sort of in fashion right now. So, after countless hours at the fabric store, and even more hours driving to and from every JoAnns within a 30 mile radius, I found some fabric to recover the pillows and make the Gigi couch look a little more my style. The actual covering of the pillows, of course, was done in a one-hour before-work sewing marathon that makes it rather embarrassing how many hours were wasted at the JoAnns on this project.

Zip. Zip. Zip. Less ugly couch. 

Before

After