First you'll need to measure around the entire bottom of your sofa to get the length of your cording. Remember the saying -- Measure twice, cut once! Add 5 inches to your measurement just in case. Since our couch was over 7 feet long I had a lot of cording to make! A LOT!!
To make your cording you'll first need the plain cord. (Sometimes called upholstery piping cord, welt cord.) We used 5/32" cord. Cut out a 2 1/2 inch wide strip of fabric to the length you need. Unless you have really long fabric you'll need to join strips together. Center your cord in the fabric and wrap your fabric around the cord. Use the proper size cording foot (you can also use a zipper foot) on your sewing machine and sew as close as possible to cording for the entire length. When you have all of your cording made cut off the excess fabric, leaving a 1/2 inch allowance.
Take your cording and, starting in the back, staple it to the bottom edge of your sofa. Leave about an inch from the edge to the first staple.
When you go around the legs of your sofa cut off the excess, getting as close to the actual cording as possible.
Once you make it all the way around your sofa you'll need to join your cording together. To do this cut off most of the excess cording leaving about an inch overlap. Then take and use a seam ripper to rip the seam out, go back about two inches past where they overlap. Next take the actual cord and cut it as close as possible to where it will join with the other end.
Then take the fabric from the piece you have cut and fold it over to make a nice clean edge.
Take the fabric on your loose cording and wrap it around the fabric on your stapled cording. Remember, you stapled back about an inch from the edge so you should have room to do this. Your cord ends should just about touch. If you find you left too much cord cut to adjust.
Next we are going to take a small strip of cardboard and staple it around our 1/2 inch seam on our cording. This is so that the cording allowance won't droop down and be seen. Now you are done with your cording.
Next you will put the dust cover on the bottom of your sofa. We saved the dust cover that we took off the sofa but it smelled like it had been stored in a musty basement for YEARS so we opted not to use it. Instead, we used landscape fabric. Yep, you read that right, landscape fabric.
Measure, cut to size and staple on. You'll need to make careful cuts around your sofa legs. Bam! Dust cover complete.
Next installment we will make our cushions and complete our sofa!!!
