How to: Make your kids drawings into a cushion...

(And more potato printing )

 The One room Challenge: Week 5

Ooooooh....nearly there folks!

One more week until the big reveal of my efforts to make over my 5 year old daughter Mia's room for the One Room Challenge!!

I am a linking participant in this awesome challenge set by Calling it home, to design and makeover a room in our home in 6 weeks. You can see my entire design process and follow the makeover by checking out my previous posts , links in the sidebar ---->

Be sure to check out the very inspiring and talented Official ORC participants makeovers here and the other linking participants progresses here.

Anyway: Don't get too jealous folks, but I'M DONE!!

Pretty much...just need to style and get it ready for the photoshoot next week!

I am itching to show you all how it's turned out, but as I don't want to jump the gun, today I thought I'd show you all how I turned Mia's drawings into some funky cushions to complete the look!

Mia has been involved with the design process of her new-look room right from the start, and it has been so much fun doing this together: From browsing pinterest finding inspiration and putting together the moodboard, to picking out furnishings and art, this makeover has all the elements that SHE wanted....

....including a plethora of funky cushions on the bed!

So last week Mia and I set about designing some fun designs to be made into cushions:

We came up with a handful of funny designs we liked, then set about enlarging them:

Mia working on the large scale drawing of one of her cushion designs

I then taped down the large drawing onto my work surface, covered it with an ironed piece of plain white fabric (that I also taped in place). I then used a fabric pen to trace the drawing onto the fabric and drew a line approximately 1" around the design to represent the shape of the cushion...

(It's not hip to be square in this case!!LOL)

 

I then mixed up some fabric paints to create the colours we wanted...

 ...and carefully coloured in the design, taking care not to go over the lines. 

TIP: Mix a little bit of water in with the paint to make it easier to paint onto the fabric, but do change to plain paper underneath the fabric before applying, as the ink on your design may bleed into the fabric!

Use a small brush to paint around details.

When I had finished painting in the colour on the fabric, I blasted it with a hairdryer to dry and set.

Then I re-drew and neatened up the lines with the fabric pen...

...and added some funky stripes to Mia's "tiger horse" for an added bit of detail.

Before ironing the finished design to set.

As I believe that the secret to all good design lies in the details,

I then set about recreating the half moon print I did on Mia's feature wall on a piece of fabric to use for the back of the cushion....just to tie in with the look of the room:

Again I used potatoes to make the pattern.

But this time using black fabric paint, and a fabric pen.

I drew up some lines, 5 cm apart on a piece of paper that I taped onto my ironing board, then placed a piece of plain white cotton on top, securing it in place with tape...

I then traced the lines onto the cotton using a ruler and the fabric pen...

Then I cut the potatoes to shape and simply painted the fabric paint directly onto the potato, before pressing the potato and printing the pattern onto the lines...

 ...when I had finished printing one section of the fabric, I blasted it with my hair drier to dry the paint, then ironing to set, before moving onto the next section of the fabric...

This way creating enough of the half-moon patterned fabric to use for Mia's cushions.

I then sewed the back panel to the front cushion design along the line that I drew up around Mia's design , using my tiny weeny sewing machine :D

If you have never sewn up a cushion before (Stop me if I'm offending you now!) just remember to pin the front and the back together facing eachother....and leave a gap along a straight bit of the seem, big enough to get your hand through.

Then I inside-outed the cushion, stuffed it with plenty of wadding and sewed shut with a hand stitch.

And that's it:

 

Mia is so proud of her cushions that she designed...

And here's a little sneaky peek as to how some of her new "monster family" of cushions look on her bed:

Fun hey?

Mia fell asleep cuddling them all last night!

I think they're a hit!

Please vote for me for best DIY blog