Posts Tagged ‘furniture’

Supersized Doll House Chair

Friday, June 4th, 2010

So, when I created the tutorial for this felt doll house chair I wondered what would happen if I turned it into a toddler chair. Well, when the next One Yard Wonders book comes out, you’ll be able to decide if it was successful or not. :-) Clearly the ‘muslin’ (canvas) pattern holds weight, but, I don’t know, I’m not totally satisfied with it. Is tying a chair weird? Should I have used upholstery buttons instead of just thread? But I don’t think I can do any serious redesign now.

I do still need to make the final version, that’s next on my table. I’ve finished one project for the book, and I have two more and a looming deadline that is totally stressing me out! It’s like I have a real job again! Stress! It makes me want to crawl into bed and wait until those in authority come and haul me away for pretending that I can accomplish something good. Erg. But! One foot in front of the other, and not wasting time online can work wonders. Also, just a little sake before I sit down to write really helps me get out the first draft of a pattern! I found that out last week. Is that bad? Should I not admit that? Maybe, but it was nice to have a little help with the voices in my head saying, ‘no!’ ‘that’s awful’ ‘no one will understand that’ ‘that’s too basic! People will think you’re condescending!’ ‘give up!’ But what would be the point of life if we gave up, right? So, forward forward forward.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Crafty | 6 Comments »

Junk Challenge

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

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

Junk Table

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. :-D 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.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Crafty, Life | 3 Comments »

DIY Low Bed Loft

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Now that I’m a parent I get to do all the cool stuff for my daughter that I always wanted… And I wonder why she has too much stuff, oh yah, because I like to shop at thrift stores and garage sales and I’m a pack rat. Hmm. I’m working on it. But not hard enough…

Anyway, the extra bonus about this project was I got to do it with my husband. Always a plus. He likes to over build things, I like to under build them, together we try to reach something reasonable.

Lofted Bed

What is this? It’s a starter loft. We lofted Rebecca’s bed a whole 20.5″. With the 8″ clearance the bed had before, it’s not quite high enough for me to sit under. But it’s just the right sized cave for some three year olds.

The basic construction is two low TROFAST bookshelves from IKEA, (like the bed), stabilized with plywood screwed into the back (with a ridiculous number of screws in my opinion) and L brackets and bolts holding the bed to the bookshelves. Conveniently the wrap around velcro feet of the bed tent cover up all the bolts going through the bed legs preventing curious little fingers from trying to loosen them. Bonus! (The bolts going into the bookcase have the bolts hidden in the recessed cavity on the underside of the top of the bookcase.)

With the plywood backing these bookcases (which are also put together with lots of bolts) are pretty sturdy. Really the weakest point of the whole system are the bed slats. I think I could jump up and down on it if I wasn’t worried about going through the bottom of the bed, and it easily passed the 350lbs test of my pregnant self and my husband sitting on it and wiggling.

Now I just have to convince Rebecca that the drawers that slide into the bookshelves are a great place to organize her toys, and are not in fact each a bed for a single doll. Sigh.

Tags:
Posted in Crafty | 1 Comment »

Felt Armchair Tutorial

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Tea & Arm Chairs

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.

Chairs

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Crafty | 10 Comments »

What is this?

Friday, January 16th, 2009

Pattern
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…

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

Chair
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?

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Crafty | 10 Comments »