How to sew a Majlis or Duwaneya.
Measure out the size of the area you want to cover, for example, measure out how many yards or meters long your mattresses will be. Total that.
Multiply it by 3 for yards, 3 1/2 for meters, and that is the amount of fabric you will need. (remember this is a wild estimate, because your creating the entire thing by eye.............so add another 3 or 4 yards or meters of fabric just in case when you go buy) (Very important to buy 60in or larger wide fabrics or it won't be wide enough)
Now pick some realy nice fabric that is on sale!
Hint* Stripes look realy good on these!
You can choose 2 matching fabrics as shown above. One for the matts and back pillows, and some extra yards of another fabric for the armrest pillows.
Now you need cusion material. Although you can realy use your imagination to stuff them if your short on money! Beleive me I know!
You can do 2 things - depends on what you have more access too.
You can go to a sheep farm and get about 8 bags of wool - probably very cheap.........wash it, dry it in the sun (if your in the Middle East this is not hard - well it is a lot of work but it dry's very quickly).
Or probably far more practical - high density foam that you can cut! Buy it at the thickness you want your matts to be. Obvousely the thicker the better !
Buy some stuffing for pillows as shown above.
Now, you will notice if you look at traditional matts, they are sewn like 2 sheets put together - inside out and then flipped outward (to hide the stitches).
Measure out each matt with 6-8 inches extra on the ends to accomidate the sewing and padding on the matts.
Cut your fabric and sew it like a I said above, inside out all around the ends, leaving one end open to slip it over the matt.
Flip it right side up, and slip it through the matt.
Brush your hands over it to get out creases and get it well fitted over the matt.
Sew the end by hand. Don't make the sewing extravagant, because you will want to occassionaly unsew this end and wash it.
Finish all the matts the same way.
Now you have 1/2 a living room or 1/2 a duwaneya You will be excited now!
The same thing is done when sewing the pillows, only now you measure the width of matt and sew pillows to lay your arms on to fit that.
As a bonus, you can sew backs on these matts - to lay back on....these are also pillows! But they lay up against the walls ontop of the matts. You don't have to do it like in this picture. My matts have 2 pillows on the back and one at the end of the matt where the next will sit - connecting the 2 matts together - looks great!
Now you have a dewaneya
You can add pillows for decor! A nice carpet and a small table for drinks in the middle of the floor.
Not nessesary but definatly nice!
If your in the Middle East you'll find these everywhere.
If not you can very carefuly shorten the legs of a end table - better yet buy a pine one, cut it and finish it yourself.
Add some funky looking lantern lighting shown above.
(If your bored - do all of this - you'll be cured of boredom I promise you)
You can decorate with ceramics they look great and can be found in ranging prices and sytles.
Ceramics and sofas can be found at Just Morocco as well as other beautiful products.
