I would vacuum it, vacuum again, and then just keep vacuuming it over and over again. I would stay clear of any water until you have extracted as much of the dust as you can.

Vacuum, then use hot soap and water on tough stains. Then......this is key....place a terry looped towel over the wet spot and iron over it with a hot steam setting on your iron to raise the nap back up. I've only tried this on dark velvet. Water staining might be an issue on a light velvet....?

I'll second the vacuum and vacuum advice....but the question of washing, or sponging depends on the fabric....cotton velvet, dacron, rayon or silk...which is unlikely for upholstery!

vacuum it well and either hire a carpet cleaner machine with upholstery tool or get them professionally cleaned. make sure you clean in the direction of the nap though and not the opposite direction. a carpet cleaning machine will suck the dirt out just like with carpets but you need to get the special little upholstery tool to do it.

I do have the special upholstery tool already....I actually bought it for my car which has really pale interior and shows everything! Even water!!!!

Think that would work? It would make the velvet damp though...then I could use the towel/iron idea!

Anything is better than dusty feeling...with the microfiber sofa and loveseat which lives in the den (which took most of the brunt from the dust of refinishing hardwood floors) it cleaned up just fine!

We didn't have enough space to store EVERYTHING so had to rely on the den for alot of the larger, less WANTED objects...lol

I'll give you an update tomorrow...this is my task for tonight...fun fun...at least it's now mowing the lawn! (Yesterday I moved my mom's lawn b/c my dad is deployed in afghanistan and her regular lawn mower is P.O'd because my dad came home for 2 weeks RR and he mowed the lawn himself) So now he refuses to show for 2 weeks! We got alot of rain in bama last week so it looked like a jungle!

my mother does NOT mow lawns...lol

hi dana, the upholstery tools are normally used for everything from car seats to lounges so it should be the same type of tool. mine has a little trigger on it so it shampoos and sucks up the water at the same time, and then I can go over again without holding the trigger to suck out some of the extra moisture, it will be damp when youre finished though but shouldnt be wet.

some fabric furniture you can agitate back and forth to get a really good clean but you definitely dont want to do that with velvet because it will end up like crushed velvet so go in the direction of the pile only and you could try the towel and iron afterwards, that's a good idea to dry it off a bit more.

When I had my velvet couch cleaned professionally, they used a dry cleaning solution. The fabric is cotton velvet.

Have you checked the cleaning code of the fabric?