How to Determine the Yardage for Recovering a Couch
- 1). Position your couch in an area where you can remove the upholstery from the couch without worrying about making a mess.
- 2). Cut the upholstery off the couch in sections with a sharp utility knife. Cut apart the seams so you end up as much as possible with the original shapes of each piece, including the original seam allowances.
- 3). Label each piece of fabric so you know where it goes. If you cut carefully, you can reuse all of the pieces as templates for when you cut your new pieces of upholstery fabric.
- 4). Measure the length and width of each piece of fabric with a tailor's tape measure, in inches. Multiply the two numbers together to obtain the area of each piece.
- 5). Add the area of each piece of fabric together to obtain the total in square inches.
- 6). Convert your measurement to square yards by dividing your square inch total by 1296, the number of square inches in a square yard. Round up to the nearest whole number. Add 20 percent onto your total to ensure that you will have enough. For example, if you need 20 yards for your couch, add an additional 4 yards.
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