Remember my struggles with the tufted sofa?  I’m not usually paranoid about inanimate objects, but I felt like I needed to keep an eye on that one.  It silently threatened to “do me in” with its seemingly bulletproof batting and ridiculous amount of tufts. I finally learned how to speak a language this sofa would understand… Let’s just say that the sofa got the point.  It understood the awl perfectly.  (Jeff thinks I should’ve said it understood “awl-fully well”, but I just couldn’t go that far.) The wooden handle of the awl and the sharper, thicker needle allowed me to push through all of the layers and make a way for the thinner upholstery needle.  (For those who asked about the needle, I was using a needle made for tufting, so it was relatively thick, sharp and six inches long, but it wasn’t enough to get through this sofa.) So, I

I don’t know about you, but I always start projects with great optimism and enthusiasm.  And most of the time things go smoothly. This is not one of those times. Stripping the upholstery was pretty easy, because three of us worked on it in turns… And painting the frame?  No problem. I added a layer of batting to the back, so it would soften the foam a bit…   And I used the pieces of fabric that were removed from the sofa as templates for the new fabric pieces. That back piece was huge!  I happened to have an antique hemp mattress cover (that would’ve been stuffed with hay or feathers, depending on how affluent the owners were) that was long enough once opened up. We pinned all of the pieces in place and cut them out.  I cut the back piece much larger than the fabric template, because of the tufting,