How to tuft your IKEA Klippan

With St Patrick’s day coming up and 2017’s Pantone colour of the year, we’ve decided to bring in a hack for all lovers of the colour – Green.

And what better way to do it then to showcase it alongside our Rouge Emerald velvet slipcover, upgraded with new legs and Chesterfield-inspired sofa tufting.

But first, here’s what inspired us to do so:

The Inspiration

Chesterfield Tufted Sofa c/o AnnaSuiShop

A few of us here really like the Chesterfield sofa and were thinking, “Wouldn’t it be really cool if we could hack a sofa into a Chesterfield, like the Klippan?”

And that was the lightbulb – the Klippan is pretty much like the Chesterfield minus the round arms and tufting.

Brayden Studio Verdi Tufted Sofa c/o Wayfair

Then we thought maybe we should be a bit more realistic and consider other options since the Chesterfield’s trademark look is precisely because of the round arms (something that we can’t really create) and tufting (something we can definitely do).

We continued searching and eventually we found something we liked.

Simple Tufted Sofa c/o Dylan Gallery

A square-arm sofa with a very modern and minimal look, something we thought we could recreate very easily.

Thus began our journey, here are the before photos:

The IKEA Klippan – Without Slipcovers IKEA Klippan with Rouge Emerald Covers

The Prepwork

First and foremost, here are some tools that you’ll need:
– 1 Comfort Works Klippan Slipcover (Assuming you already have an IKEA Klippan)
– 1 Tufting Kit (Twine, Needle, Scissors, Buttons)
– 1 Pencil for marking
– 1 Ruler
– 1 Willing Friend/Partner who can help you

Next, you’ll need to decide on how much tufting you want to do. Initially we wanted to do the entire sofa, back and armrests – the whole shebangs.

That was when we thought the Klippan could become a Chesterfield, but we realised that it’s best to have it minimalist with its square arms, so we settled for 8 buttons the end.

As such, using my expert mathematical skills, we figured a 15.6cm gap between each button would work the best.

The Fail

Before we move on to the full instructions, here are some things you SHOULD NOT do because we did – and realised we made a mistake.

We flipped the couch – DON’T do this

Basically start measuring and calculating to see what would be the best way to get 8 buttons placed equidistant from each other.

The problem unfortunately, was that we marked and measured from the back instead of the front – where we’re supposed to be putting the buttons on.

Here are some photos documenting our silliness nonetheless:

The Hack

Lesson learned: Instead of marking where you want the buttons to be at the back, mark it at the front on the slipcover – a white chalk from the tufting kit would work.

And yes, we didn’t take pictures here because we wanted to jump straight into tufting.

Surprisingly the board used in the Klippan wasn’t as thick as we imagined, so the needle poked right through fairly easily with some elbow grease.

First sign of the needle going through

Once the needle’s through, tufting it with a button is the easy part.

If you have forgotten how this works – check it out in this tutorial:

The tricky part would be tying it to the back of the sofa, so it’s important to make sure you use about an arm’s length of twine to get it to the other side and onto the springs of the Klippan sofa.

The best part is that if you don’t like how deep the buttons are tufted into the cushion, you can adjust them by moving the string accordingly – you will need a friend on the other side to push the button in more for a more obvious tuft.

And yes we’ve tested – the springs are thankfully safe, and will not break upon sitting.

You can also see how uneven my “arm’s length” was throughout the process but hey it worked out fine at the end!

Here’s how the front looks:

It gets easier once you get the first and second tufts done; You’d have completed it before you know it.

Okay, it did take us about 2-3 hours in total at the end as we did have to figure out measurements firstly, make a mistake and then get the job done.

The Reveal

And there you have it, an IKEA Klippan sofa hacked with a Rouge Emerald slipcover and tufting buttons.

Looks pretty damn premium and “not IKEA” yea?

It’s no surprise that this would be one of IKEA’s most popular sofa – check out our IKEA Klippan review here.

Want a Klippan sofa now? Let us know what you think in the comments below!