embroidery

A few years ago I bought an antique couch, Eastlake style and probably from the late 1890's. It had the original upholstery and the stuffing was straw and horse hair.
Pretty gnarly stuff. Though I would have liked to keep it intact, the stuffing? well picture 100 years of dust on straw and horse hair.
It just seemed nasty to me. So it has been ripped out and I will be re-doing the whole thing in the next few weeks, new burlap strapping and re-tying the springs, re-touching the finish etc, before I upholster the thing.


Okay, so here is the problem, I have a length of heavy fabric I have been saving for this couch, but last week I got this idea of using linen instead. So I drew some designs on natural linen and embroidered them. What if I embroidered linen for the back panels? and natural linen for the rest of it?
The fabric Iwas going to use is a reproduction of a early 1800's pillar print and would look really cool but so would the linen.
Of course whatever I do will then have to be incased in heavy plastic ala the furniture in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" 'cause some critter in my house will just pee on it.

Somebody tell me what to do.