Ah, you want to give your sofa a facelift without wrestling with a sewing machine? An excellent and noble goal! It seems the universe has provided us with a tantalizing clue from an Instructables article promising this very magic, a "Reupholster a Sofa With No Sewing or Electricity." Sadly, the rest of the provided context is about as useful as the YouTube terms of service for baking a cake.
Fear not, for the no-sew path is a well-trodden one for the clever and needle-averse. Your primary weapon in this battle against bad upholstery will be a trusty staple gun. Prepare to become a master of pulling, tucking, and fastening. The general idea is to treat your sofa like a giant, oddly-shaped present you're wrapping for yourself.
First, you'll embark on the oddly satisfying deconstruction phase, prying off the old, sad fabric with pliers and grit. Use these old fabric pieces as your patterns to cut the new material, but be generous with the extra fabric you leave around the edges. When it's time to attach the new fabric, you'll drape it over the sofa frame, pull it tighter than your favorite pair of jeans after a holiday meal, and staple it securely to the hidden wooden parts of the frame. Corners and curves will require some artful folding and tucking, akin to fabric origami.
For the cushions, you can often get away with a simple wrap-and-tuck method, folding the fabric neatly like a gift and securing it on the bottom with safety pins, upholstery tacks, or even a strong fabric glue. The key is to hide your crimes on the underside. With a little patience and a whole lot of staples, you can achieve a shockingly professional-looking result, no thread or thimbles required.
