Slowly But Surely ...

I have begun dressing the mahogany Arts & Crafts bed I finished a few months ago (from Jane Harrop's Edwardian Era Miniatures in 1:12 Scale).  The mattress is following the tutorial at Tiny Handmade, which I adapted only slightly by using cotton balls instead of foam, with a layer of thin quilt batting as a sort of pocket to hold the cotton. I cut the batting to size without seam allowances, then whipped the edges together so that it was all one unit (stuffed) before wrestling it into the "ticking", which is an old work shirt of David's.

(Why cotton balls?  Because I had a coupon for a huge bag of store-brand cotton balls that ended up being about 75% off, and we don't use them much in the bathroom, so I figured I could stuff dollhouse furniture with them.  This worked quite well -- I did fluff them a bit so that they lay more smoothly inside the batting pocket -- and they are not nearly as lumpy as one might think they'd be.)

The tutorial is quite simple but effective, though I will say it is a bit of a challenge to get all of the seams straight, even if you use striped fabric! and also to get the tufting spacing to be the same on both sides.  This is in fact my second attempt, as the first one I tried to tweak a little too much and it came out too small.  I also think that next time I will try off-setting the rows of tufting.  But I'm pleased with how very comfortable the mattress looks!

The lace skirt is made of 17 repeats of the Clover Leaf Lace edging in Lace from the Attic, with a crochet cast-on and then a suspended bind-off taking the place of the very last row, in an attempt to "match" the two ends as much as possible.  The cotton is DMC 80 tatting cotton, which to my amazement I found at Michael's --I didn't think they would ever carry anything so esoteric ... hurrah!  It's still a bit large in scale, but I'm not ready for the micro-knitting yet.  I stitched the two pieces of edging to a hand-hemmed piece of muslin.  I had hoped to have a piece of lace along the foot of the bed as well, but the construction of the footboard doesn't allow that -- it probably could, though, if one thinks ahead far enough while putting it together.

This is the Hepplewhite serpentine table kit from House of Miniatures.  Mine is not as much of a success as it deserves, I'm afraid -- since it is a lovely little table -- but my kit-building techniques are still rather amateurish.  Apparently it's a classic newbie mistake to sand too much -- you don't realize that at this scale a little sanding goes a long way -- and I took off too much of the delicate shaping of the legs.  I decided to convert this into a design element, and roughed up the wood even more, to look like an older piece of furniture.

I also am not impressed with my polyurethane-finishing.  I really like the linseed oil/beeswax finish on the bed, so I think I might stick to that or maybe Danish oil in future -- more work in the applying thereof, but the results, at least for me, seem to be much better.

Still -- this was a happy coincidence! --

I will keep an eye out for a better sewing-machine, but this will do very well in the meantime.

And this is the tile-topped table kit from Omniarts of Colorado, which I came across quite accidentally on Etsy a few months ago.  This particular kit is probably from the 1980s. 

I painted it with Martha Stewart’s satin-finish craft paint in “Wedding Cake," and made the tiles to my "old favorite" tutorial from Wasting Gold Paper.  The design is of course a Duncan Grant drawing, though I don't know where it is from -- it's not quite the "Queen Mary" design but very like, certainly.  I did trim it just a smidge at one side, to center the roundel.

I was really touched to read the tribute on the Omniarts website to the lady who started the company, so I made sure that the pencilled assembly number, which presumably she had written, was visible on the underside, the way so many full-sized pieces of furniture have --

(I did add in the extra bracing underneath, as the table seemed alarmingly delicate without! but I should trust that Aleene's tacky glue more, it's great.)

I am extremely pleased with the way this turned out -- some of my craftsmanship is a bit rough, but the whole thing looks pretty much exactly the way I'd pictured it in my imagination!

And here is this month's in-progress photo of the Turkoman petitpoint carpet -- which I must say is very handsome but rather tedious.  I do like the general effect though, so I will just keep plodding along! --

Comments

[Susan D]

Nice work. Thanks for sharing the details and results. Seems a shame to cover the mattress with sheets, though.

[Toffeeapple]

The mattress looks very comfortable; in fact, it looks very like the first bed and mattress I had as a child - after my cot.

I would not have your patience for the furniture.

[Mary Lou]

Holy cow, Jeanne! These are amazing. And your photos are so good. This had me thinking of The Borrowers, they'd love the bed!