One Inch World

This is a work in progress from an embarassingly long time ago. How long? It has been stashed in a corner of my sewing basket through two moves now… probably unloved for almost 10 years. Why? Well, it was a fiddly pain, those pink squares are 1/4″ inch across. The whole thing is about 7″ across. What was I thinking? And then I got one of the stripes backwards and didn’t notice, so I had to rip a bunch out, and then I just gave up because the corners weren’t lining up. I think, it’s been a while so my motivations are a little hazy. Well, the corners still aren’t lining up, but at least it isn’t getting soaked in sewing machine oil anymore. I can’t say it makes a good doll house quilt, it’s much too stiff, but it makes an okay rug. Anyway, it’s done, so there!

A month ago, or so, I signed up for Rhoda’s Recycled Craft Challenge, and this dressing table is what Rebecca and I made.

You can see more of what other people made at the Flickr group. It was a nice little low stress quick project, and now Rebecca’s little people have some more furniture. We can’t really agree whether this is a throne or a mirrored dressing table, but I don’t see why it can’t be both.

I have about five other projects to post about, but they are just going to have to come when they come. This here is a no apology blog. Also, we did container painting (see here and here) for art group on Friday, but it seems unlikely that I’ll get around to posting that. I’m not sure I even got a good picture! Couple more weeks until baby#2 (Which do you think, Penelope, Margaret, Guinevere, Ginger, Elizabeth, Marigold? I could keep listing names, our list goes on… Rebecca says if it’s a girl she’s going to call her Monica, and if it’s a boy she’s going to call him Pit, so maybe it doesn’t matter what we think. Although she has agreed to lollipop as an adequate nickname for Penelope.) comes, and I’m trying to do a little less.

Here is the set of ‘nesting’ dolls that I made for my housemate’s baby shower. I like them a lot, although I should have made the pocket a little looser. Luckily mommy’s tummy is soft enough to accommodate baby.

A couple more weeks and things are going to get much noisier around here, then in another four months the noise will double when I have my baby. Almost like having twins in the house, but much easier since we also have four parents… (and by then a three year old…)

Do you know a little girl who needs more places for her dolls to sit? Maybe you? We had four place settings for our doll tea time, but only three chairs, so I made up the pattern for these chairs to fix that tragic shortcoming. Really tragic, one of the dolls had to sit on the sofa. Oh noes. But now, now they all have chairs.

(more…)

My daughter does not discriminate by species, her doll house has many animal residents, and we decided they deserved a grass lawn in the attic.

We cut a bunch of medium and light green triangles and stuck them down on a dark green rectangle with the needle felting tool. Flexible glue would have worked just as well I expect. Then we ironed some light fusible interfacing onto the back to make it a little tougher, and trimmed the edges with pinking shears to give it a slightly more grassy feel. For such an easy project I think it came out pretty well, and now the cow has something to eat during the tea parties. And, um, the pigs might have a new toilet. We’ll have to see how that one plays out.

Can you tell what this is? It looks a little bit like a fighter jet. Or if you turn it sideways it could be a city skyline…

How about now? It’s sewn up, but inside out.

Oh, it’s a chair!

The other day we were having a tea party in my daughter’s doll house, and there were not enough chairs. Yes, it was tragic, but one of the four thrifted Kelly dolls had to sit on a couch. Shocking. Something had to be done. So I mentally unrolled an arm chair onto a piece of paper. That was the easy part. Then I had to find the time and motivation to do all the cutting and stitching and finishing. I think that took about three hours.

I’ve been wondering recently whether my life would have taken a different direction if all those aptitude tests in high school had been a little more thorough. I had great math and spatial relation skills, so I went into engineering and computer science, because those were the obviously salable things that I liked. But what if they had asked me whether I liked to sew? I don’t think I ever considered that I could be one of those people who created patterns. But it’s full of geometry and space folding and figuring out how to put things together, which I love. But it’s also one of those scary and unreliable artistic professions, and I’m often not very brave that way.

Would anyone want to make one of these chairs? Should I put it on my list of tutorials to do?