Sunday, April 24, 2016

Sweet dreams: bedding for a tiny bed


After making a small bed out of a combination of balsa and bass and painting it a federal blue, and then making a tufted mattress for it stuffed with six layers of cotton quilt batting, I found some wool and cotton blend sock yard at the local charity shop that I knit up on 2.5mm  DP needles [I realize it's not finished, but I needed it for the pictures. It's 40 sts, done in a knit 1 purl 1 rib for 5 rows, then switches or a stockinet for 4 rows with 3 stitches of seed on each end and the 5th row is garter, knit to the desired length, which was this bed specifically. Folks kept thinking I was knitting a miniature rug or a potholder; it's such lovely yarn in person, I wouldn't want to muck it up with grease. 



The blue fabric below was labeled 'summer denim'. It's hardly what I'd call a denim; it's a straight weave and the only thing it has in common with denim is the color and the warp/weft white blue combo. Otherwise it's very light weight.



It's too big for the little blue bed, and too narrow for the double bed. I had thought to make a coverlet and double it over, but for the scale of the miniatures, I'm going to leave it alone. As a weave, the design is reversible if a little big. Color wise, it would have been appropriate for the 19th century. A turkey red would have been more difficult to accomplish, but the use of a white warp and a colored weft still might have been costly for something as large as a blanket. Not that people didn't do it.

 

Sunday, April 17, 2016

the little dollhouse that could.

Presenting the Hofco Junior Collectors Series Gettysburg House Kit. It took a lot of digging on the internet and finally discovering a post on eBay of a partially assembled kit including the instructions [for which mine a long gone] with the name on it to figure out that this was my doll house and the manufacturer. I don't remember when I got it, I think perhaps it was a Christmas present?
That little table is all that I can find of the furniture that was in that house. Thankfully, we still have all the trim pieces to finish the exterior.

I got a bug in my ear to finish it, an so began a flurry of paper collecting an research online and pinning on pinterest

I wasn't sure where to start- walls? Floors? Put on an addition? 

Ceilings, suddenly, with cream milk paint, seemed like a good place to start. The interior hall is not finished; I can't quite get in there with the brush I have.