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How To Make Beautiful Remnant Fabric

by on Mar 1, 2011

Who can turn down free fabric? In my business it’s not uncommon to be offered discontinued upholstery fabric samples. If you know a little trick, it’s simple to create your own patchwork upholstery fabric yardage.  Thrifted chair, free fabric…Beautiful and colorful chair.

The first challenge is to have a good eye to choose fabric colors that will form an overall unified fabric. Personally, I don’t care for patchwork if it’s just a bunch of different colors  and patterns thrown together. The chairs here, created by Design by Leftovers, are covered in a unifying color-Purple. For interest, they’ve plugged in a few unexpected fabrics, like the red plaid.Overall, it looks modern, sophisticated and intentional.

Here’s what you do:

  1. Gather up medium to heavy weight fabric remnants
  2. Lay them all out to find your color palette for your upholstery fabric
  3. Pull out all the fabrics that fit that palette
  4. Set aside other fabrics
  5. Press fabrics flat
  6. Choose three different sizes of patches.
  7. Cut the remnants into those sizes.
  8. Arrange like sized blocks in a row
  9. Now stitch strips of fabric together using a 1/2″ seam allowance, using the same sized blocks in each strip. For example, you will have one strip made up of 4″x6″ rectangles, the next strip will be 8″x8″ squares and so on, however you want it.
  10. When you have enough strips, lay them out and arrange them how you want them to be stitched together. Arrange them so the seams are offset from the strip next to them. Pin and stitch patchworks strips together
  11. Congratulations, you’ve just created your own one of a kind upholstery fabric. Now get busy with that first (or second) upholstery project. You can do it!

Two blue color remnant fabric chairs and a wooden violin aside.

Here’s a tip on getting your hand on discontinued sample books:

Go around to interior decorators, upholstery shops and high end fabric stores and offer to take the discontinued books off their hands. Usually, not always, they are happy to get rid of them. You may want to make an agreement that you will take them to a shelter, school, or nursing home, if you can have 1st dibs on the fabrics in your color palette. Most business owners appreciate the kind heartedness.

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2 Comments

  1. Judith

    Totally fell in love with this!  Gorgeous!  Finally found some classy and fun ideas!  Thanks