Quilty Pleasures - Take II

Now that my sister has her gift (her birthday was on the 17th) it's time to reveal the building in its entirety.

At the beginning of the last post I showed you the building "in the raw". I cut the pieces from 1/4" MDF, which is what I use for most of my buildings, and used Quick Grip to glue it together. You saw the wood floor in the last post and the "leprechaun green" I painted the interior walls. I used a textured brick paper for the exterior. I was struggling over what to use as decorative brackets around the roof line when my DH suggested he had some leftover life size baseboard molding. He sliced off the top, flat part of the molding, then sliced 1/4" slices for the long brackets. He then made the smaller brackets from 1/4" slices from just the very end of the trim. I think they look great and will be using these type of brackets again in the future, for sure.

I still had to install the "windows" and trim them out, as well as a decorative trim around the top of the roof line and along the bottom of the window frame. I decided on a 3-layer trim of dentil molding, 1/4" stock lumber and small quarter round, painting them in Wedgewood green and Burnt cherry. I was more than satisfied with how they turned out. Here you can also see the detail of those brackets my dear hubbie, Bruce, made for me.

I glued the plastic pieces onto the window frames then painted some mini baseboard in Wedgewood green to trim them. In this picture you see I have painted and installed the front and back doors as well.

I added the dentil molding combo to the bottom of the window too. Here you can see all of the window molding - - and the fact that I was starting to try out furniture inside the store.

So, I guess its time to show it all together! First, I do want to point out the street signs on the front and side of the building. Quilty Pleasures is located on the corner of C.V. Gay Blvd. and E. Martin Lane. Those happen to be the names of our late parents and I thought my sister would appreciate her gift even more with this little addition.

I made the sign using MSPowerpoint. I used a font called "Algerian" and made sure the text box was set at "no fill" so that I could place another box behind the words. I did a search for quilting stitch patterns and decided on this one which I set as a green colour and placed it behind the text box in PowerPoint. When I had it the size I wanted I printed it out, mounted it onto a piece of wood, coated it with mod podge and framed it with a burnt cherry colour wood.

So, do you feel like shopping? Come on in! As you enter you can see the cutting table, complete with a measuring tape attached to the table and, behind this, you'll find cubbies with a variety of colours of yarn for those who might like to knit, crochet, or maybe use the yarn for a simple tied quilt.

An overview of the shop let's you take everything in at once. I see the shop owner has left her bag hanging on the hook on the back door. She is also obviously a plant lover. There are orchids, a caladium and several green plants dotted around the shop. See if you can spot them all as you walk through.

On the cutting table someone has left two nicely coordinated fabrics, ready to be cut. There is a small cutting mat sitting on the corner (and another one on one of the shelves behind in case a customer is looking to buy one). Under the cutting table there is quilt batting, lining, and wool batting on large rolls, readily available for the local quilters.

There are quilt books on the window seat and a few more in the shelves of the cabinets. Speaking of the window seat, the wood grain look on the seat and up the walls of the window bump out, is actually strips cut from the sample cards for formica counter tops that you find at your local building supply store. The cards are quite large, about 3 or 4 inches by approximately 8", which gives lots of possible uses! I also want to point out that I found online, a variety of posters for what apparently used to be an annual quilt show in the USA called the "Sisters' Outdoor Quilt Show". How perfect is that for a gift for my sister?!? I put one on the front of the cash table and two others above the fabric bolt cabinet.

Finally, these are the last few pictures I took before delivering it to my sister on her birthday. There are spools of crochet cotton in the wall shelf and a box of ribbons, a quilt for sale, and a couple of decorative pots. More than half of the fabric bolts were made using fabric from my sister, so every time she looks at them she can remember each quilt she has made with those fabrics. I'm happy to say, she seemed really thrilled with it.

Thus ends the saga of Quilty Pleasures - happily delivered to its "forever home".

But - talking about a saga - remember Dorothy's Corner?? I still had to finish the hydrangea tree for the back of the garden before I could call it complete. Well, my mini friends and I have been meeting through Skype on Wednesday and Friday afternoons to work on our minis together (virtually). I made the decision that on Fridays I would only work on something from previous projects I have not yet completed. We've dubbed it "Finish Friday". I have been working on the tree on Fridays and on whatever my current project is on any other day of the week I want. I have finally gotten all of the buds covered in tiny little white blossoms.

Each of the 29 buds required between 80 and 90 tiny flowers that each had to be shaped before applying. That was a lot of Fridays!! In the end, the hydrangea tree I was going for is a peegee hydrangea called Pink Diamond. So I then made a very watery mixture using a craft acrylic paint in "old rose". By making it really thin I was able to basically touch my brush to the wide end of the blossom and let it seep into the rest of it. I think it looks way more realistic than if I had used a solid pink paper to cut the teeny flowers. You can see the details better in this picture, and any of the others, if you click on the picture to enlarge it.

Now I just have to add the leaves. I think it will take only 8 leaves per branch instead of the 80 or 90 tiny blossoms so it will take far fewer Fridays to actually finish this! Thank heavens for small mercies!

To close, I wanted to leave you with this picture of Dorothy's Corner. It is sitting on a corner of a cabinet and, when my husband was trimming the rhododendron earlier this season, he took one of the branches and placed it in water to see what would happen. The buds were still tightly closed and showed no colour at all. A week later it was in full bloom and hanging over Dorothy's Garden. No way I can duplicate that!

Until my next post a week from today, keep safe, keep healthy, and keep on mini-ing! TTFN!! - Marilyn D.