Déja vu!

Yes, you have seen this before - or at least something almost exactly like it. Yes, I am doing the same thing - all over again. I decided I really didn't like the effect of using card stock as a framework over double-sided tape on my greenhouse so I'm back to using mat board again.

I haven't had a lot of time to work on minis lately but at least I started cutting out the new window framework. I think I'll like it a lot better. I also decided not to cut it all the way to the floor like the first one. I like the idea of having a couple of feet of "wall" at the bottom to work with. Of course, the whole framework will be completely flat so I will then add some strips to look like molded panels, and a "sill" that will go all the way across the top edge of the short little "wall".

However, I'm afraid it will take a back seat for a few days because....drum roll....I'm going to the Montreal Miniature show!!!! I'm so excited! I've never been there before. Isn't my DH wonderful for letting me go? (tongue in cheek here!). I'll also get a chance to meet up with Liz and Wayne Dieleman from Grandpa's Dollhouse - although I'm sure they'll be super busy. Hopefully we'll get a chance to have a few minutes of quiet time sometime over the weekend to catch up. I'm also hoping to meet Giac Dell'accio sometime on Saturday. You would know Giac as the fabulous miniature artist responsible for the English Manor Dollhouse blog. We've exchanged emails but have not actually met yet. Also, my friend Louise will be visiting her sisters who live in Quebec and I'll spend some time with them over the weekend as well. So much to look forward to!

When I get back I will have a write-up for you about the show and, hopefully, some great pictures. They don't always allow pictures to be taken - especially on the sales floor, but perhaps some vendors will let me take some if I ask nicely. I should be able to take pictures in the exhibition room at least. So - I'm off to pack and will get back to you with details on Monday! TTFN!

Hosta la Vista, Baby!

Of course I know it's supposed to be "hasta" but - since I'm not trying to say good-bye and I am talking hostas - well, I think Arnold would approve.

I took a little time to work on the hostas today. First, I took some covered floral wire, painted it green and stuck it into a piece of foam to dry. Then I started on the leaves themselves. Yes, like you, my original thought was to paint the back of the paper before cutting out the leaves but, paying attention to what Annie says in one of her video tutorials, I could be left with white edges on each of the leaves which wouldn't look good. So, I painted each individually and left them to dry. I have saved one sheet of leaves that I printed out so I am going to paint the back of this paper to see just how bad the edges show up, once cut. It's worth a try to see if I can live with it.


After the leaves were all dry I began the much slower part of shaping each individual leaf. Placing them on a piece of craft foam for a soft surface to shape them, I used the large end of my medium stylus and, moving in circles around each leaf, right to the edges, I gently shaped them into a more realistic, slightly cupped shape. I confess, I didn't press any "veins" into the leaves. I was too anxious to start putting them together and see the finished product! Cutting the lengths of painted floral wire into pieces about 1 to 1 1/2 inches long each, I bent the ends a little so the leaves would sit correctly. I gathered everything else I needed - a pot, some "soil", my tools and glue and got started! I also curved the wire a little - again, to look more realistic once planted. Then I dipped the end of the wire into a little bit of tacky glue, attached a leaf, and set it into my Styrofoam piece to dry.


Then comes my favourite part - actually "building" the plant. From Annie's printables I had a few different sizes of leaves which helped to add to the realism as well. I filled the bottom of my pots with some tacky putty, covered that with glue and sprinkled it with dried tea leaves from a used tea bag to simulate soil, then starting arranging. The end result - I love it!! I don't know why one of the pictures looks like there's something white in the middle of it because there isn't. I guess it's my terrible picture-taking abilities -- just one more thing that's not my strong suit!



Now I need to get some pictures of different varieties of hostas so I can add additional colours and textures to my greenhouse and its landscaping. Such fun. So - this time 'round - hasta la vista, baby .....or, in my usual manner.....TTFN!

My Hiatus is over!

After a very busy St. Patrick's week I took a break from everything except taking a break. But now I'm back and ready to "mini" again!

First I want to say hi to Mable - I see she's joined us here. Welcome! Mable has her own Etsy shop (Mable's Minis)for the best Christmas trees, ornaments, gift bags and other accessories you'll ever see. Beautiful stuff!

I spent some time thinking about the greenhouse decorative framework - I don't like what I did so I'm going to redo it with the mat board I had originally planned. In the meantime, while I was thinking, spring arrived. Yes, it snuck up on me - and in disguise as well!! It's disguised as a continuation of winter! Gee, who saw that coming?

Anyway - since spring is in the air, and I'm building a greenhouse, my thoughts naturally turned to plants and flowers. I found some great examples by searching through the net. I especially love a site I found: We Love Miniatures.(Note: Since this was first posted, the website for this miniaturist appears to no longer be available. If anyone knows if she has moved to a different site address, please let me know. Thanks!) They have some great tutorials there on several different plants as well as flower pots, lanterns, and other cool stuff. I'm going to start by making the hostas. The leaves look fabulous. In order to get them as realistic looking as possible she actually took a picture of hosta leaves from her own garden, shrunk the pictures and repeated them on a single sheet for printing. What a great idea! I can hardly wait for summer to arrive - I'm going to try out that technique myself. Hosta leaves are probably one of the easiest to do this with since they're large and have simple, defined edges - no frills or little in-cuts.

I spent the evening watching a movie with DH and cutting out lots and lots of hosta leaves. I've bagged them up and have them sitting on top of another sheet of leaves. I think it will take 16 or 17 leaves of varying sizes to make a good-sized plant. That means I have enough to make - well - maybe a gazillion! Okay - maybe math is not my strong suit. That's not a good thing for a former accountant to say, is it? And, it's actually a little white lie. Well, actually a whopper since, if I have a strong suit it would definitely be numbers! It's everything else that's a little iffy. *smile*

I also bought another set (or three) of picture frames from Michaels. These ones were orange-coloured but the biggest one is a slightly different pattern than the others I showed you the other day. I'll use them all up eventually. On Sunday we went to a flea market. We didn't know the hours they were open so arrived at 12:40. They close at 1:00 so I just made a really quick tour around the tables to see what types of things they had. I did pick up six pieces of sliced, polished rock. Because of their shapes, I thought they might make nice table tops for little entry tables or sofa tables (you know - the ones you place behind a sofa that's placed in the middle of the room instead of against a wall). If anyone has any other ideas for their use please share them with me and I will include them in a following post.

So - my leaves are cut out - I will start making my hostas tomorrow and let you know how I make out. TTFN!

All is revealed!

Yesterday I mentioned that, along with the other items I showed from my shopping trip, I also picked up some red duct tape and some bright yellow duct tape, but that I couldn't tell you what they were for. Well, now I can!

Today is my friend, Louise's, birthday. I know she is planning a project that will be a Via Rail train station interior so I thought I would try to make something she could use when the time came. I made a large sign that could go on the outside wall or, perhaps inside, and also a sign that will point travellers in the direction of the airport shuttles and the other trains. I had some mat board that was exactly the right colour for the background of the big sign and used the duct tape to make the yellow and red cut-outs for the VIA letters and the maple leaf. I also made a little birthday card with a flamingo on it. Louise collects all things flamingo, so I had to include one somewhere! Happy birthday, kiddo! I hope you've had a great day.



After returning home from dropping Louise's little gift to her, I took some time to ponder my greenhouse decorative frame again. I had already cut it out using cardstock so I took the plunge and started cutting double-sided tape to cover all of the straight edges of the frame. Once this was done I traced the curved sections onto a piece of white mat board, cut it out in one piece, and used a glue stick to attach it to the rest of the frame. Then came the task of stripping the backing from the double-sided tape and trying to carefully get the placement right. Okay - I confess - I did get DH to assist me. He made sure the alignment was correct on one side while I lined up the other. Then being fairly confident we had it centred properly, we pressed in on the middle and worked our way to the outside edges.



Now I'm going to take some time to look at it and decide if I like it this way or not before I do the same thing to the other side. If I decide I don't like it, I might take my sister's suggestion and just cut the shape out in negative form and paint over it, strip off the pieces where I didn't want paint, and just go with the painted illusion rather than the actual framework. Hmmm - I'll have to think about it. Maybe someone else has an even better suggestion? In the meantime - I'll wish you all happy "mini-ing" - until the next posting! TTFN!

Green is the colour for the week....

..green beer, green shirts, green hats and, of course - my greenhouse!

I've been trying to work on the greenhouse project over the last few days but DH and I had so much to do to get ready for our fund-raiser show at the Fredericton Playhouse this past Saturday night. The show went well and thankfully we made some money to help with our Irish cultural outreach activities and to support our Irish Room, which is an Irish research and lending library that we open, through the use of volunteers, on Thursdays and Saturdays throughout the year. There's always so much work to be done. This week will continue to be busy until St. Patrick's Day has passed but I will still try to do something "mini" every day - no matter how small (no pun intended!).

So, I wiped off the rest of the "grouting" from my greenhouse floor but haven't yet filled in all those corners where the grout has shrunk. Since then I have spent my nights laying awake thinking of things like: what about the walls? Shouldn't I make something decorative to add interest? How am I going to make all those plants, seed trays, work and display benches? What accessories do I need to make the scene in my head come to life? My late-night musings actually proved productive and I think I have answers to most, if not all, of these questions.

To start with, I decided on a pattern of window/wall panes. Then I took my trusty 1/4" graph paper, taped some pages together to make it fit the wall of the greenhouse, and drew out the design. You can see where I started to cut out the waste areas in the picture below.

My original intent was to cut the framework out of mat board (for those who don't know what this is, mat board is what you use to frame out a photo or picture before you put it into the actual picture frame. It's the white or coloured border piece that surrounds the picture.) The thickness of the mat board is perfect to line up with the metal frame of the greenhouse. But then I wondered how I would attach it because, if I just glued it to the Plexiglas, you would be able to see the glue through the other side of the window. Then, I thought I would use a thin, white, double-sided tape cut to the exact size of the decorative framework. So I did what any self-respecting miniaturist would do. I went shopping!! Look at what I found (mostly at the Dollarama):

1. Double-sided tape - but It's too thick! When combined with the thickness of the mat board, it just wouldn't work. So - what to do, what to do!!??!! Change directions, of course! So, now the actual decorative frame will be cut from cardstock paper which, when the thickness of the tape is added to it, will be about the same thickness as the mat board would have been.

2. 1/12th scale picture frames (from Michael's) - okay these have nothing to do with my greenhouse project but aren't they pretty? I can paint them any colour I want when I decide where I am going to use them. I bought six packages of the green ones and four packages of the pink because I liked their shapes and they were only $1.25 a package! They also had all white ones but mostly they were the same as the small square and circular frames in the pink and green ones so I went for the fancy ones (of course!).
3. Plants!! See all those little leaf shapes on each of these? When pulled off they will make great little "seedlings" to go in my plant trays in the greenhouse.
4. Little stickers - okay, once again not for the greenhouse but won't they make nice little labels for stacks of towels or tiny bottles for a mini bathroom?

I also bought some coloured duct tape but I can't tell you why yet. Once I have used it for what I think I'm going to do with it, I will post a picture of the result. Yes, you're all on a need-to-know basis and, you just don't need to know yet! I should be able to reveal its use on the next posting.

Now I'm going to go work with that duct tape for a little bit before I quit for the evening. Hope you have a great one! TTFN!

And peace reigned throughout the land.......

It's my fairy tale - I can end it any way I want! Yes, our little guy went home to his Mom and Dad this morning. And yes, we were sorry to see him go. However - I am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning and to the temperature of my kitchen to rise a couple of degrees since the fridge door won't be constantly opening and closing.

Last night our F.A.M.E. group had our monthly meeting. Only four of us were able to make it but we really enjoy getting together anyway. We all work on our own thing usually but last night I also brought along some kits to make miniature brooms for anyone interested. The tutorial is one from Casey's Minis site. I printed out Casey's instructions, (making sure it was clear where they had come from), and bagged up the materials needed along with the instructions. Here are the kits I put together and, in the second picture, Louise and Mary Lou are concentrating on putting them together. Okay - Mary Lou is. Louise is talking. Go figure. (insert smiley-face here, ha ha)
See the brown paper bags in the centre of the table? They are holding our "tidbits". We keep them secret until the end of the evening, then draw names and each person chooses an anonymous bag to take home (after opening it in front of us, of course!). We'll talk about that again in a moment....Back to the broom-making:

Two of us used the wire wrapping as shown on Casey's site and two decided to use leftover threads from the Penelope cloth to wrap the upper part of the broom head to make them look more "rustic". Here are the finished brooms:

After completing the brooms we all went back to working on items we brought with us until it was time to draw for the tidbits. In response to my last post where I had a "spoiler alert" because I was showing what I was making for this month's tidbit, Alayne asked how our exchange works. Basically, mimicking the tidbit exchange from Camp Mini Ha Ha, each month anyone attending our meeting will bring one small item that, if it were on the retail market, would have a value of around 3 to 5 dollars. Hand-made items are always highly coveted but, given the range of experience and skill sets, ready-made items are also welcomed. It's just a way of encouraging people to find the time to do a little bit of mini-ing each month - no matter how crazy their life has gotten! Plus - we really look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. I showed you what I was making - a basket with a set of towels and bottles in it. Since that photo, I continued with the basket by dry-brushing "straw" coloured paint over the whole thing to tone down the dark brown a bit, then I sprayed it with a matt-finish spray to seal the paint. After that was dry I arranged the towels and bottles, bagged it, and it was ready to go. Marijke ended up with my tidbit. I got a great set of fabric bolts from Louise - absolutely perfect for the quilting shop I will be working on this year.
One last note about the basket set I made - If I were to do the same thing again I would make the towels first, decide how I wanted to set them in the basket, then adjust the basket size accordingly. Well, live and learn!

We also took some time to finalize plans for the Miniature and Doll Show and Sale we will be hosting in Fredericton on October 22nd, 2016. The information and the application forms have been drafted and will be sent out to targeted people and groups that we think might be interested. If anyone reading this would like to be included in the mail out, please let me know and we'll make sure to get it to you.

Along with the show and sale we are planning on doing two free workshops - one for adults and one for children. Numbers will be limited - especially for the children's workshop. I received a package from Maureen H. of St. Albert's Minis. She sent me a number of templates for making chairs out of folded paper (and fabric if you wish to glue it to the paper). These will be perfect for an item in the children's workshop. Thank you so much Maureen. I brought them to our meeting last night and everyone was thrilled with them. Personally, I'm also thrilled with the lite brite pegs you sent me for making bottles out of. I can hardly wait to give them a try!

As I mentioned in the last posting - this next week is "Irish Week" for us, leading up to St. Patrick's Day, and we will be very tied up with events we are involved in so postings may be a little sporadic. I will do my best to check in as often as I can. Until the next time - TTFN!!!

Two down, one to go...

..and, as much as we love him and know it'll be so quiet when we take him home on Wednesday, there is something else we realize too....it'll be so quiet when we take him home on Wednesday!! Wow - we do forget how much energy they expend, don't we? Not to mention that we've been getting scary previews of what Brogan, the teenager, will look like just by watching Brogan, the 5-year -old. It seems that every 10 minutes or so we find him with his butt sticking out of the refrigerator!! I have no idea how our daughter and son-in-law are going to afford to feed him in another ten years! Oh well, that's why it's nice to be the grandparents - we do get to send him home.

I did get a little done, in between long Jedi battles where everyone seemed to be the bad guys and the good guys at the same time. It really was hard to tell the players without a scorecard! We had a busy day of game-playing, walking to the play park, going to McDonalds so he could play in the play room, coming home to play some more, then, finally, bath and bed. Ahh - quiet time....until early tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow evening is the monthly meeting of our mini-group, F.A.M.E. (the Fredericton Area Miniature Enthusiasts) and we have adopted a feature of our Camp Mini Ha Ha experiences: each meeting we bring a "tidbit" for exchange at the end of the evening. Spoiler alert to any F.A.M.E. members - you are about to see what my tidbit for this month is!

I wanted to try out one of the basket tutorials from Kris Compass's site and also, I really like the towel tutorial I found on Elizabeth's site as well. So, I made up the basket last night. I didn't use the handle from the tutorial because I wanted the basket wide open the fit the towels in. Instead, I used two staples. I couldn't get the staples in at first so I took a sewing needle and made little holes first, then I dipped the ends of the staples in a little glue and pushed them into the mat board ends of the basket. Then I used three strands of brown floss to wraparound the staples to look more like wicker or rattan. Finally, I painted the basket with Brown Iron Oxide acrylic paint, including the handles. Tomorrow I'll check the paint for needed touch-ups then spray it with a sealer.

Today I also took a few minutes to do up a couple of towels and a few bottles to add to the basket. Elizabeth uses baby facecloths she buys at a dollar store to make her towels since the cloth is quite thin, but still looks fluffy enough to look like towelling. Unfortunately, I can't find those packages of baby facecloths anymore. All the ones at the Dollar Store here are brightly coloured, if they're a solid colour, and have large baby-inspired patterns on the others. So, I bought a terry-cloth baby sleeper. I would never actually wear it on a baby since the fabric is so thin, but it seems to be a good weight for the towels. Plus, it also provides a lot of material to make a lot of towels! I've shown you the pieces here. Tomorrow I'll finish it off and put it all together. Then I will post a picture of the final product. It's a little more than I would normally do for a tidbit but the members of our little club are worth it!

Also, over the last couple of days, I glued together the 3/4" MDF I am using for the floor of the greenhouse. Then, trying to use what I had on hand so I didn't have to drive to the store, I used bathroom caulking to affix my stone and glass tiles on the subfloor and, after several hours, I "grouted" by using drywall compound I found in DH's workroom. The picture I've included here shows part of the tile washed off after the grouting dried. I still have to wipe down the rest of it. Unfortunately, once this dried, there are "holes" at every corner of every tile where the drywall compound dried and shrank (shrunk? - whatever!). If I try to fix this by grouting the whole thing again it'll take forever to clean off all the tiles. Therefore, I think I'm going to use a glue syringe filled with the compound and just "inject" it into the corners where it's needed. Much less mess and clean up - I think....

Once this is done I will start fitting in decorative frameworks around the perimeter of the green house, overhead beams that will allow me to hang lots of plants in addition to the plant tables that will also be full, a "misting system" to provide much-needed moisture in the greenhouse, bits and bobs - you get the picture. Then I will move on to the potting shed that will be attached to one end of the greenhouse, and finish off by landscaping around the whole thing.

March is a very busy time for us since we are so heavily involved with the local Irish Association but I will still try to find time to do some minis. It's hard to go cold-turkey when you're really addicted. Have a good evening everyone. TTFN!!

My Favourite mini....

...is also the reason I didn't get much real mini-ing done this weekend. He's 5 years old and goes from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds flat. First, after picking him up this afternoon, we took him to watch the young kids learning how to play Curling, then we took him skating - which lasted all of 10 minutes before he'd had enough, then we took him shopping for "Brogan food". $86 later we headed home where, after putting the groceries away I showed him how to make instant pudding using a Tupperware "quick shake" and he showed me how to make fruit salad by putting all his blueberries, strawberries and pineapple chunks into a big bowl with a lid and rolling it around the kitchen. Then we played "Ninjango", which is a game he made up. I'd explain it to you but, trust me, it wouldn't help! Then we played Jedi knights where he repeatedly allowed himself to be killed by his grandfather so I, the medic, could bring him back to life by using the magic tickle spell. These games have a lot of rules! We finally persuaded him to let us cook our supper. I say "our" supper meaning for DH and I because his eating habits are just as mysterious as his game rules. While we waited for our supper to cook he ate two chicken wieners, 10 slices of cucumber, 6 cherry tomatoes, a large helping of his fruit salad, a yogurt drink, two chocolate chip cookies, a glass of milk, and a tube of "cheese string" - only the stripey kind of cheese, not the orange one! He reluctantly let us eat our supper when it was cooked, all the while commenting that "dis gonna take all da minutes!!", then pushed his large container of Lego out into the living room where we, once again, played another "game" with them. Again, I can't tell you the rules, or even the name of the game because it's all very confused in our heads. His head was, of course, completely clear. That must be why he kept winning the game and, according to him, his grandfather and I kept losing. I guess we're just really bad at playing games! We never win! As that game was drawing to a close he announced he was hungry. WHAT??? You've got to be kidding! Since it was getting close to his bed time anyway (which, mercifully for us, is quite early), we suggested he have a bowl of cereal. Although he agreed with that idea he wasn't happy that the bowl was only 3/4 full of cereal and figured he should also have a banana to make up the difference. After munching everything he could lay his hands on we managed to chase him down the hall to brush his teeth then herded him into his bedroom. Going through his backpack we found there were no pyjamas. Of course not, he explained. His Daddy doesn't wear pyjamas so he figures he shouldn't either. After all, Bubba (his grandfather) doesn't wear pyjamas either. It's a guy thing, he tells me. And since I'm not a guy, apparently I'm not meant to understand. Three books later and a rousing chorus of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and it was the end of Day 1 of a three-day sleepover at Bubba and Binty's house. Please - somebody come rescue us!!!!

Tomorrow I hope I can get a little more done on the floor to the greenhouse. If so, I might have something to show you tomorrow evening - depending on how much energy I have left after a day full of hard-fought, but ultimately unsuccessful game battles! I'm off to rest up for the long day tomorrow. TTFN!!

Finishing Friday

Taking a page from another blog I read (was it Elizabeth's from Studio E or another - I can't remember), I've designated Friday as "finish day". No new projects allowed! So each Friday I will try to finish something I've already started. It may not always be possible to finish up an old project in just one sitting but, at least I'll give it the old college try!

So- I finished the little shabby chic chair today. I decided I couldn't use the stitching I had first done because it was too close to the edge to wrap the cushion. I did receive an excellent suggestion from Scrapbooking Butterfly to use the first stitching to make a fire screen. I'm going to give it some thought. In the meantime, I chose a second design and started stitching again. I actually like it much better because the design is a little smaller so looks more in proportion to the chair seat. Here are the two stitch patterns together.

The new one I'm going to use is on the left.

Then I painted and dry-brushed the old chair and I like it much better than the original as well. With the seat cushion glued in, I may now have to find a little scene to put this in. Once again I'm showing the original chair and the new version next to it. I hope you like it. I do.
Now I have some time to check out my favourite blogs and see what they're up to. Have you checked out Marijke H.'s lately? She has made the most amazing St. John's Wort plant. I'm not sure I've ever seen a miniature plant turn out so realistic-looking. It was a tremendous effort but man, did she ever do a nice job. Hop over and have a look and be sure to click on the finish picture so you can see it better. I really want to be her when I grow up!!! See you on Monday! TTFN!!

Take a seat...

...but not this one - it took too long to stitch it to give it up now. Okay - it really didn't take that much time. I just like to complain. But one thing I certainly can't complain about is that there are 3 new followers on board this evening. Welcome Narina, Grandmommy and Kat! I hope you enjoy your visit.

Back to the chair revamp - I have a really bad picture of the finished stitching for you to see. It's evening and the lighting isn't that great but you can at least get a feel for it. You can probably see where my next concern lies - I stitched the design too close to the edge so it won't be easy to cover the seat properly as you can see the original seat size next to the stitched piece.

I will, of course, persevere, in my usual non-complaining, non- whiny, selfless way as I , once again, sacrifice my peace of mind (maybe that should be "piece of mind" given my often miniscule amount of brain-power) and my delicate fingers, for the greater good! That is the "mini" way, isn't it? ;D.

On Thursdays I teach traditional Irish dance and Irish language at one of our local elementary schools so I probably won't have anything done to show you. I'll have the chair finished for posting on Friday and perhaps some work done on the greenhouse. See you then! TTFN!

A Cinderella Story

Welcome Rosa and aandaferley (sorry, I don't know your name). I hope you enjoy your time on this blog as much as I enjoy having you visit!

This is a short post today. After posting pictures yesterday that included a little armchair I put in the greenhouse so you could get a sense of proportion, I took a good look at this little chair. It's an old, inexpensive piece of furniture that was probably one of the first pieces I picked up many, many years ago. I have never used it in any scene I have ever done or even contemplated and I had to ask myself why. Well, it really is very basic, and not very pretty with its dark, high gloss stain and finish, and its little gingham seat cushion. However, like Cinderella, a little cleaning up and dressing up could actually make it pretty enough to fit in with several of my future projects.

So, I ripped off the old cushion then painted the chair a blue colour. When completely dry, I'm going to cover over the blue with white, sand off different areas for a "shabby chic" look, and make a new seat cushion for it. I'm praying that it will err on the side of chic and not on the shabby side.

Below is how the old chair looked - very dated and definitely more on the shabby side. On the right is after I painted it blue - very uneven painting which is exactly what I was going for. Tomorrow I'll start dry-brushing white over it and decide where it should be sanded.
I thought a nice embroidered seat cushion would look good on a shabby chic chair so I went searching the net and found what I was looking for. On the project portion of Open House Miniatures, there are several free patterns for mini-needlework. I have chosen one of them to make a seat cushion for the chair. The pattern is in colour and is very clear and easy to follow. I hope it won't end up too large for my chair seat. I think the piece of leftover cloth I am using is 28 ct. but it could be 26. Hopefully that means the finished piece should be no more than one and a quarter inches square - just barely fits! If it turns out any bigger, I'll be in trouble! Keep your fingers crossed for me! Below you can see the beginning of it. The cloth looks like a really large count but you can tell by the floss cards next to it that it's actually quite tiny. I'll let you know how it turns out. TTFN!