Vintage French Sheet Slipcovers: Part 1

This is such a pretty photo of my little living room...taken by the super talented team of
Victoria Pearson and Heather Bullard
for Country Living Magazine

 those are some very old and creaky windows 

on the wall behind the pine bench, so I'm really glad they don't show !

We have some fun and interesting plans in the works for that wall
 ( a new space for dining and entertaining!)

but that's another story

So lets talk about the couch...

 the story with this couch
(why does all of my furniture have a story? too weird)

is that I basically got it for free,

well almost free...

When we bought this house I needed a small couch and 

 I had tons of American Express Rewards points so 

I turned them into Pottery Barn gift cards 

and bought a couch...yep it was quite a few gift cards

Here is the couch in the catalog:

It is called the Greenwich Loveseat

It has a tight back which makes it seem deeper for a small couch

 and

 the lines are clean and simple 

with plenty of room for pillows

I also thought that it would look great slip covered without being too frilly

Because the living room is rather long and narrow,  there are only a few ways to place the furniture
so the back of couch can be seen most of time.

I know that doesn't sound like a big problem but how often do
we really think about how the back of a couch looks?

And what fabric to use for the slip covers?!

Once again I called on my wonderful friend Wendy Lewis

I purchased some wonderful faded floral fabric
very similar to this

my original plan was to slip cover the cushions in the floral and the rest of the couch
in white or cream linen...
but in the end the fabric seemed lightweight and bit too feminine
and maybe not quite strong enough to hold up to
dogs, muddy shoes and coffee stains

So how about thick French Linen sheets?

Perfection!

I purchased 3 really big sheets.
Two with red monograms like this one

and one with a white monogram and ladder cut work like this one 

None of them match 

but the weight is very similar

and they feel old and washed and very antique!

Just what I was looking for...

Next post...

Part 2

getting creative and putting it all together