Take Pictures of Your Work

Take Pictures

After you have the sofa all taken apart, it can be quite confusing to try go figure out how all the assorted pieces get put back together.  "Better to have the pictures and not need them than to need them and not have them." To the observant, the sofa itself will tell you how to put it back together. The pictures that you take and the old cover will show you far more than a tutorial about how to put it back together.

In this modern day of inexpensive digital cameras, and with so many people having cell phones with built-in camera, it is very possible  that every professionals ( and do-it-yourselfer) have a camera within arms-reach, and and to be able to use it constantly, throughout the whole process of recovering the sofa.

• Before you start removing old cover, take pictures from all sides: front, with the cushions and without the cushions, back, side, bottom.
• Take pictures that include the whole sofa, take closeups that include just the arm, take extreme closeups that include any special detailing, such as folds on the front of the arms, etc.
• Take pictures throughout the whole process, from stripping the old cover off, taking the seams apart, cutting and attaching the new fabric, until you have the sofa finished.

As you unsew seams, take pictures of how the pieces looked before you took them apart. (Be sure to mark the pieces, as described under Method 2: Cutting the Fabric.) Your pictures should also include showing how the folds are made,  the type of padding, the support linings, and anything else that you may need to know. Take more picture than you think you will need. Be thoughtful of how you frame the pictures and what you include in the pictures. Once you have the old cover removed, your pictures will be one of your main reference  points. If you took the old cover off the furniture in the sequence described in "Removing the Old Cover" and took pictures all along the way, that becomes your picturial guide of how to put the sofa or chair back together. The other main reference point will be looking at the old cover.