Quilty Pleasures

To start my post this evening, I have to take a moment to show you our first blooms of the season: my pjm rhododendron is in full bloom. If you walk towards it you clearly hear the sound of hundreds of plump honey bees feasting.

When these blooms start to fade, our lilacs will just be coming into bloom. They will be followed by the peonies which will be followed by everything else - white coneflower, delphinium, pink tickseed, deep purple campanula,and whatever annuals we can get our hands on including the geraniums (pelargoniums) we overwintered in our basement windows. So much to look forward to!!

As for my mini work, on May 4th, I decided I should do something special for my sister's birthday that was coming up on the 17th. Not that it was a special birthday, just because she's a special sister (although at our ages, every birthday should be celebrated!). She has always been interested in my fascination with miniatures, though not enough to try any herself. Instead, her creative outlet is quilting - and she does some truly amazing work. So, to celebrate both her birthday and her talent, I wanted to make her a quilt shop - and I had just under 2 weeks to complete it!

Now, I want to say right up front, this is not an original design of mine. Several years ago I fell in love with a shop made by Casey Rice of Casey's Minis. She called her little shop "The Rusty Needle" and you can find it by looking through her list of labels. Casey was kind enough to share with me the basic dimensions of the box itself so I figured out windows, doors, etc. from there and, from 1/4" MDF, cut out two kits that I could use to make whatever kind of shop I wanted. Did I mention I cut those out in 2016?? Bottom line - I had a room box kit cut out and ready to go which was a big help.

I don't have pictures of the pieces but I glued together the front, back and 2 sides using Quick Grip glue then set the box on the floor and traced around the inside so I could determine where the inside floor would be. It should be noted that mine is a mirror image of Casey's - not for any creative reason, but simply because I'm lazy. The door I had for the front was hinged on the wrong side and I was too lazy to take it apart and re-hinge it. Hence the mirror image. *smile*

Then I painted the inside walls "leprechaun green" and I used Popsicle sticks and tongue depressors for the floor. I quite liked the pattern of two rows of Popsicle sticks, one of tongue depressors. The narrow and wide planks together turned out well. I sanded them, stained them and put on three coats of matte-finish urethane. The picture below is before the coats of urethane.

At this point I will temporarily step away from the building itself and talk about all the things I needed to put in a quilt shop. First - furniture. I found these three pieces in my stash. The large piece will be used for fabric bolts. I took out the bottom centre shelf because I wanted some bolts to stand upright and the shelves were too close together. Then I found an old Michael's hutch that had two doors in its upper portion - which I removed. This would hold a finished quilt and whatever else I could come up with. I also had an old House of Miniatures kit for a bookshelf that was meant to sit on top of a drop-down desk. Here it will be hung on the wall to hold crochet thread, ribbons, and who-knows-whats.

Now, I needed a table to hold the cash register. I was just about to make one when I spotted this buffet and hutch in my furniture stash.

I can't remember where I picked up this piece but I never used it because it always seemed a little "clunky" to me. I think it was the mullions in the doors that threw me off for the most part. They seemed way too thick to be in this size door. So, if I cut the top off, and sanded and sanded and sanded the top of the bottom half to remove the glue, I could stain its top and use it for the cash table.

So now I had all the furniture painted with a few coats of white. Oh yes, I also found a small table to which I added braces between the legs and glued in a bottom shelf. And you can just see the top of a little white pressed-back chair sitting in the middle. I also gathered up already made bolts of fabric - some I bought, some were made for me by my friend Louise, and a stack of fabric scraps I had wheedled out of my sister without her knowing exactly what I wanted them for. I cut 3/4" wide strips of mat board which I then painted white on the coloured side, and cut into 2" lengths for the bolts. Then I was off to the races.

In the tall buffet cabinet I folded up a "quilt" - actually a piece of pre-quilted fabric in a tiny floral pattern, a couple of cushions, two bolts of patterned flannelette suitable for a nursery quilt, a collection of sewing patterns and a couple of quilting books.

Speaking of quilting books - here are the 8 book covers I made, then used mat board to wrap them around to look like books.

Here's a picture of the smaller wall cabinet, mostly filled. In the top shelf is an actual mini quilt, folded. I made the balls of crochet cotton by wrapping 3 strands of embroidery floss around pony beads. I also made a wall holder for DMC floss. Agghhhhh - I don't know that I will ever make skeins of floss again!!

Here is my first try at floss skeins. I used a couple of posts in my wire-bending jig. Nu-uh!! DID NOT WORK FOR ME!! After several failed attempts I put two layers of black foamboard together and stuck two tapestry needles 1/2" apart. I taped down one end of the floss, wrapped around the needles 7 or 8 times, slid little pieces of paper underneath and wrapped it around and glued before cutting off the ends of the floss. I started getting a little better with the last two I made but I can't see me making a career of it!! It was truly one of the hardest teeny things I've ever worked on.

I will save a look at the other furniture pieces until my next post which will show the progression of the quilt shop itself. I hope you like the progress so far. TTFN!! - Marilyn