Welcome Trish, good to see you’re up and running on Discourse 
Fabric and Leather shopping tips
Hi Lauren.
Will try to manage to get to your meeting on the 1 st Tuesday , will that be June 7 th ?. Can get the leather to you earlier if you would like me to .
Trish
aw you’re super kind to offer, thank you Trish! I’ll gladly steal some of your leather Looking forward to meeting you at the Craft meetup, I’ll join too (definitely don’t head to the makerspace just to drop off the leather, but I’ll be around for the long weekend if you wanna meet up for a chat / to make something)
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No need at all to come earlier. Like Mounia said, just dropping it in the space whenever you’re there would be awesome. I think we’ve already got some leather it can join in the bottom of the wooden set of drawers. Thanks again!
Just spotted this…
I’ve also cut up an old foam mattress to make outdoor cushions from, and I used a pair of cheap curtains to cut up and cover them. Not sure how long the fabric will last as it’s obviously not designed for upholstery, but it will do me for now.
Simply Fabrics in Brixton do have some waterproof fabric for outdoors use, but their range is limited. I seem to recall it costing around £5 upwards per meter, but you’d need to be happy with the limited range they have available. Thicker fabric was around £7+ a meter, I think.
Rolls and Rems in Lewisham had a slightly bigger range, at much the same cost.
One option I’ve been thinking of investigating is to waterproof fabric myself. There’s a few ways you can go about this, but the one that looks interesting is to use a combination of clear silicon and mineral spirits. Apparently you mix them well together (outdoors!!!) and then either paint on, or soak your fabric in the mixture. It does apparently stink to high heaven, and I guess you’d need to make sure you found the correct type of mineral spirits to use. More info: https://www.instructables.com/Easy-Waterproof-Clothing/
There’s videos of people doing this on youtube but none of the ones I found just now were of suitably high production quality to link to here 
Finally, there’s also a fabric shop up in Finchley that apparently specialises in fabrics more likely to be suitable for upholstery - both indoor and outdoor. It was Robert, from Simply Fabrics in Brixton, who pointed me in that direction, but I’ve not yet been up there. https://www.curtainfactoryoutlet.co.uk/
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Oh that’s cool! I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one that’s had the idea to upcycle one of those (overpriced, poorly made) “innovative” foam mattresses…
When I get started on the project, I’ll start a write up post. Thanks for the additional fabric tips - though I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to try waterproofing material myself…
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Have you thought of making some non removable, light weight waterproof fabric covers to protect the foam, then making removable covers in a nice fabric which you could waterproof. I’ve used Nikwax TX.Direct spray-on and its not bad and www.profabrics.co.uk has waterproof fabrics for marine and camping.
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