White Whale

World meet White Whale. White Whale - world.

This is a big project that I though of, oh I don't know, in April of last year. This is my amazing boyfriend's (here on known as AB ie amazing boyfriend) average Ikea couch. And when we moved in together, I decided it would be relegated to our awesome enclosed porch. Oops, we decided it would be out there. Its comfy, attracts cat fur (as you can see), attracts cat claws, and it amazing already bleached since moving it here in September. Since I knew, sorry we knew, it was going outside, I started looking for already made Ikea slip covers but by golly if I'm going to pay more for a slipcover than AB payed for the couch. Unless I make it that is. Then paying more is totally fine. How on Earth does that logic work out?

Decided on an ikat outdoor waterproof fabric from fabric.com that's washable (!).

I got 12 yards cause I've never covered anything before, I was 3,000 miles away from the couch and was on the phone with AB and his tape measure. Its a dream to work with, especially after sewing silky stuff for so long.

Long story short, look what I made!

So the couch is in 3 main parts. Two small cushions at the arm rest, two large cushions for the backrest, and the whole enchilada. I've now got the small cushions covered. My goal is to get all the covers very very tight. I really like tight upholstery. And this cover is as tight as it'll get.
Here's what it looks like now.

They look much smaller now.

I've decided that the cushions will have zipper closures. At first I thought I would have tabs with snaps in the middle of the back of each cushion, but in my first experiment, I realized that the z-dimension of the cushions required some more wiggle room to get the cushions in the covers. Zippers it is. I hate installing zippers. Always have, always will. Anyway the zippers look really nice and they are hidden because they are at the bottom and backward facing side of the cushions.

Next, I'll do the big cushions, and then the white whale. Hopefully it will be done by the time the temperature gets above 70. This year.