Upcycling Furniture with our William Morris fabric

27th January 2022

Bringing a piece of furniture back to life is always so special and rewarding. When buying a new home, this conservatory set was left for us which was fantastic. We loved the rattan of it and decided to give it an upcycle to breathe new life into the set using our William Morris fabric. We chose our licensed William Morris Willow Bough in green to recover it, it’s perfect in every room, but in the conservatory, against the garden, it looks absolutely wonderful!

To recover the set, we used our heavyweight fabric. We have lots of designs within our licensed William Morris collection printed on heavyweight cotton fabric. If you’d like a sample, we’re happy to send free samples within the UK.

After a quick paint of the room, we set to work on the cushions! Now, there were many more than we initially thought – you get to the end of one and then realise there’s 14 to go! The main thing is to have a good audiobook or telly programme on whilst you work, recovering when you’re not a professional isn’t the easiest, but its very rewarding at the end once it’s all done.

To start, let’s cut the pattern. We used the existing cushions for our pattern, unpicking them with a seam ripper to measure out against the new fabric. You could also use the measurements, but as all of our cushions are different sizes and shapes, this seemed the easiest method for us. It meant that there was less chance of us going wrong by using it as a pattern, we wanted them to be the exact same size so that we could reuse the cushion pads and make sure the base cushions fit.

We even reused the piping, we’ve never done this before so it seemed the easiest method. We knew by reusing it that when we put it round the cushion edge that it would be the right size because we knew it would meet in the middle at the back. The cushions are feather so they wouldn’t hold a shape when measuring so it was much easier to do it this way to recover the cord to keep the shape. It meant we were reusing most parts of the original sofa too, from the cushion pads to the zips!

With each cushion having different sizes, we made sure to do one at a time so we could carefully cut, iron and press the pattern, cut the fabric and then the binding so we didn’t get confused!

We pattern matched across the top cushions, the base cushions and the sides of the cushion. We were lucky that the pattern match for Willow Bough Green is only a small pattern match at 29cm so we didn’t waste much fabric. The fabric left over from this, we used for the binding, to make sure we utilised all the fabric and didn’t create lots of waste from the project.

We even reused the zips as they were a lovely quality, it made sure that the cushions were all the right size and the zips fit – it just seemed the easiest way for us to do it as we’re not professionals so were a little unsure what we were doing! Taking them apart bit by bit and then recreating it from the new fabric seemed the most logical way to do it.

We’re no experts at reupholstering, so it was a daunting project for us, but we’re so pleased with the result, it’s made the conservatory set look completely refreshed and new. We hope you love it as much as us!

Willow Bough is such a beautiful design, it was first designed by William Morris in 1887. It was actually first produced as a wallpaper design which his daughter, May Morris, used to decorate her bedroom. Later, it was adapted for fabric in 1895, where it was block printed in Merton Abbey.

We hope you like the project as much as us! If you recover something using our fabric, be sure to tag us, we’d love to see it!

Did you know we offer a gift wrap service? 🎁 If you’ve got a loved one you’d like to send a floral gift to this year, you can send it straight to their door all wrapped with a note written by the Laura’s Beau elves 🎄🤶🏻 It’s an option on our website only and you can check the gift wrap box at checkout to write your gift tag that we will hand write for you (we also won’t include a reciept or anything of course, but will email it to you instead ✨) Are you giving any William Morris floral goodies to your friends and family this year? 🤍
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Upcycling Furniture with our William Morris fabric

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