Welcome to another blog where we discuss our latest William Morris fabric craft. We’re all of the mind of buying something you love and using it forever. We absolutely love reupholstering an armchair to give it new life, or fixing up an old chair with a layer of paint and some new fabric for the seat. Which is why, this summer, when we were digging our old windbreak from the depths of the garage, we decided to not throw away our ancient wind break, but to update it!

At aged 32, our windbreak had certainly seen better days. It had also seen many happy holidays, so we absolutely knew we couldn’t just throw it out and get a new one. Last year you might remember we made a lovely William Morris quilt for a picnic blanket using our cotton fabrics, and then lined a picnic basket to match. So on the same theme, we decided to re upholster in effect our old wind break. Using our licensed William Morris Strawberry Thief design, we got to work!

The old wind break, having seen many blustery trips to the beach, had holes in it and was fairly broken, but the poles still have plenty of life in them, so we simply cut away the old cover to be left with the poles. If you’re making a wind break from scratch, you can buy some poles from a hardware shop, just make sure they’re quite robust so you can hit them into the ground.

Deciding between the normal weight cotton fabric we print on or our heavyweight fabric was the next task. The heavyweight fabric would have been slightly heavier to carry, as we wanted to make our windbreak double sided so the pattern was on both sides so whichever side you sit on, you can enjoy the design. We ultimately chose cotton for this reason, but either will work brilliantly.

We used the same measurements as our old windbreak as it’s a size that’s always worked for us, but you can of course make this absolutely any size you’d like, depending on your group size and how far you’d like your windbreak to reach.

You’ll start by placing two of the pieces face to face, ensuring the pattern on both is the same way up. Then, stitch down one side so you have one continuous piece of fabric. Repeat on the next two pieces of fabric. Now, cut off all but about 1cm of the salve edge where you’ve sewn.

Press the seam open and then lay one piece of fabric with the pattern side up, and one piece of fabric with the pattern side down, and stitch up the side along the top and down the other side. Turn the fabric the right way around and top stitch along the top and sides of the two joined pieces of fabric.

Lay the fabric out, and along the bottom, turn both pieces of fabric in just 1cm and then again, to form a hem and then stitch that down. Smooth the fabric out flat and using the wooden pole as a guide, form a hem down each outer side and sew down. Ensure the poles are held tightly by the hem so they can’t slip out whilst you carry it – which would be very annoying!