Tuesday 1 March 2016

A Cinderella Story

Welcome Rosa and aandaferley (sorry, I don't know your name). I hope you enjoy your time on this blog as much as I enjoy having you visit!

This is a short post today. After posting pictures yesterday that included a little armchair I put in the greenhouse so you could get a sense of proportion, I took a good look at this little chair. It's an old, inexpensive piece of furniture that was probably one of the first pieces I picked up many, many years ago. I have never used it in any scene I have ever done or even contemplated and I had to ask myself why. Well, it really is very basic, and not very pretty with its dark, high gloss stain and finish, and its little gingham seat cushion. However, like Cinderella, a little cleaning up and dressing up could actually make it pretty enough to fit in with several of my future projects.

So, I ripped off the old cushion then painted the chair a blue colour. When completely dry, I'm going to cover over the blue with white, sand off different areas for a "shabby chic" look, and make a new seat cushion for it. I'm praying that it will err on the side of chic and not on the shabby side.

Below is how the old chair looked - very dated and definitely more on the shabby side. On the right is after I painted it blue - very uneven painting which is exactly what I was going for. Tomorrow I'll start dry-brushing white over it and decide where it should be sanded.




I thought a nice embroidered seat cushion would look good on a shabby chic chair so I went searching the net and found what I was looking for. On the project portion of Open House Miniatures, there are several free patterns for mini-needlework. I have chosen one of them to make a seat cushion for the chair. The pattern is in colour and is very clear and easy to follow. I hope it won't end up too large for my chair seat. I think the piece of leftover cloth I am using is 28 ct. but it could be 26. Hopefully that means the finished piece should be no more than one and a quarter inches square - just barely fits! If it turns out any bigger, I'll be in trouble! Keep your fingers crossed for me! Below you can see the beginning of it. The cloth looks like a really large count but you can tell by the floss cards next to it that it's actually quite tiny. I'll let you know how it turns out. TTFN!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the welcome as I join the followers of your blog. The direction you are heading with this chair is lovely and it will look so much prettier with the new coat of paint and a fresh hand embroidered seat cushion. Hand stitching, especially in miniature, is to be much admired...looking forward to seeing the finished result!
    Cheers,
    Alayne

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