Hanmade in Cornwall

Hanmade in Cornwall

Sunday 24 July 2016

Learn to sew - lesson 10 cushion

Hello again!
Here we are to make a cushion from an old T- shirt.

This has been on our agenda for ages. As my daughter has been enjoying to learn to sew, I decided it could be her project.
So how has your practicing been going? If its been a dhile, gind some old fabric that you can do a yest run on. Do some simple lines back and forth to get you going before you start.

This is a simple project with straight line sewing.
Lets begin....
grab your lovely t-shirt. If you don't have a t-shirt to use thats fine. Find some fabric. 
Using a t-shirt we are going to use the 2 side seams. So if you are using fabric, cut your fabric into a square or rectangle. Sew down 2 sides. 

here we have turned it inside out. I drew a line across the top, just below the arm hole. 
This will be your sew line. 

get sewing! 

then trim that excess off. 

There is a really cute frill on the bottom, which we want to keep. So pin together the bottom edge, leaving a gap in the middle. Sew the edge together. 

Here is the gap in the middle. 

Next for the fun & easy bit- fill the cushion full of stuffing. 

Pin the gap closed. 
With a needle a double thread ( my daughter loves threading the needle!- she is so good at it!) Sew the gap closed. 
* and your done* 


Tada! 

She loves it! 
She has added it to her comfy collection on her bed AND she made it by herself. 
What an easy sewing project. 
I hope you feel inspired. 


Tuesday 5 July 2016

painted kitchen cupboards

So we got inspired to paint the kitchen cupboards, to freshen them up and give them a new lease of life- exciting!

Here is the before photos, brown cupboards that soaked up all the light.



We cleaned the front of the cupboards, choose the paint colour, took them off the hinges and got to work! 

We used Annie Sloan chalk paint. Now a few words if you have never used it....its AMAzing! No prep work just painting straight onto wood, plastic or metal. 
We have used this paint for lots of projects before so we knew how it worked. 
We choose to mix two colours together; provence and old white. We knew what kind of colour we wanted to we made a colour recipe and got mixing. We ended up doing 5 parts white to 3 parts provence. 

the mixing process

*top tip using some kind of tray ( take away trays work well) place the cupboards ontop so you can paint the sides. Saves the paint drying and sticking to any paper underneath. 
Also I didn't want kids hand prints on drying cupboards which is why we took cupboards off and painted in batches. 


It's slowly taking shape. 

We painted two coats of paint and then used the clear wax to seal it. Then hung the doors back on.





*Here it is * Complete.
It took us two weeks in total. We would paint and wax in batches and then hang the doors back on. 








Overall I think I was wanting a lighter colour but pleased how this turned out. The colour changes throughout the day with the natural light, which I like. I love how clean and fresh it looks. It has totally changed the kitchen. 
This is just the beginning...we will be repainting the white wood back splash and I will be making a blind for the window. 
It's been fun making the kitchen our own and both my husband and I have been involved which has been lovely painting together. 

New to Annie Sloan, check out our caravan paint job here