As anyone who has lived with a white couch for six months can tell you, spills and stains are no joke. One minute you’re enjoying your favorite TV show with some tikka masala, and the next thing you know you’re desperately scrubbing the couch with stain remover, seltzer, and laundry detergent, using whatever you can think of. to expel the stain. Sometimes all your efforts are in vain, and some stains just don’t come out. Of course, you could get a brand new couch (which is what I did), or you could take a page out of the wabi-sabi book and try some visible mending.
That’s what creator and photographer Phebe Rendulić did when she gave her lemons live… er, the stained ottoman you can see next to her bed in the photo above. She considers this project to be one of her favorite do-it-yourself projects in the home she shares with her roommate, Michael, in Victoria, Australia. “The ‘stain patch’ ottoman I repaired after spilling a drink on it ended up being featured in frankie magazine“, she tells us, where many of her original crafts are also presented. The ottoman itself was just a K-Mart purchase, but I admire the sustainable practice of preserving and repairing items that are otherwise still perfectly useful. In the printed ottoman, Rendulić says the stain itself was already in the form of a stain, and it reminded her of the dripping, gloomy sculptures of artist Dan Lam.
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Instead of breaking out the ottoman, Rendulić pulled out some quilting fabric she had on hand, sketched out a drippy design, and made long, irregular stitches in multiple colors to create the rainbow ombre effect you can see here. She then sewed this design directly onto the ottoman to give the piece a whole new life. The best part is that this color scheme of her visible repair matches Rendulić’s vibrant style perfectly, and even though it was a solution to cover up the stain, it looks intentional and like it was always meant to be there. So the next time you accidentally spill something on an upholstered chair, couch, or ottoman, consider covering it with something that will turn it into a unique piece of art instead of throwing it away.