Seven Months of Silence

Wow, I almost can't believe it is seven months since I last posted. Real life has been very busy and filled with some difficult times. Progress on miniatures has been slow, but finally I have some things I can show you.

Remember the French washstand I made last year, during November I made a Victorian bath towel for it based on some real ones that I saw on the internet. Mine is made from 50 count linen with a crochet edge made using a 0.4mm hook and some cotton sewing thread, the embroidery design dates from Victorian times and were stitched with Pipers Silk.

A close up of the stitching.

Hanging on the washstand, now I must do the embroidery on the second towel.

I spend some time building the second room for my Cape Dutch house during the last six weeks. The house is finally standing in a decent place where I have good access to it after we moved some furniture around.

The front of the house with the entrance hall in the center, to the right is the bedroom I just built, the empty spot on the left will become the drawing room.

The space behind the front rooms of the house will have a corridor in the middle behind the entrance hall with a kitchen behind the bedroom and a dining room behind the drawing room.

One will have a nice view through the doors into the other rooms. The furniture I used here is just to give you an idea of my plans for the bedroom, most of them won't be used here.

The wallpaper I used for the panels is gift wrap with a chinoiserie design dating from 1780, since the pattern is quite big I decided to use it in panels so as not to overwhelm the room. I am thinking of painting the bottom panels just a shade darker before I add molding all around the panels. I plan on using the beautiful silk velvet for the curtains. Making the flooring for the bedroom is probably next, at this stage all the walls can still be removed, I find it a lot easier to work on them while they are lying flat.

I have made some progress on my 1740 rug which is destined for the bedroom, the colors match the wallpaper perfectly.  

Hopefully it won't be another seven months before you hear from me again!
Elga

Building a door and two furniture pieces

This last weekend I spend some time on the building of the screen doors. The top rail is curved and after some thought I decided it would be easier to cut a slot in the wood for the glass as opposed to grinding the glass to fit, especially since I have to build four doors.

The slot with the glass in it.

Cutting the slot on my table saw was a bit nerve racking as all the curves and molding were already cut, I didn't even try to cut it to the full depth in one shot, probably did about 15 cuts raising the blade a bit each time.

Cutting the door side rails to length presented another problem, they were way too long for my table saw and I don't have a full scale table saw and my pieces weren't the same length either. in the end I taped a piece of wood to the arm on my band saw and cut all eight side rails to the same length but still a bit overlong.

The last little bit I cut off on the table saw because I wanted a really smooth cut.

The panel for the bottom of the door was slightly too big and I had to remove about 0.5mm on all four sides, with the angle in the middle rail this was all quite complicated to cut and fit.

One of the four doors in the frame to check that the height is right.

I also checked that the glass and small rails will fit right, I am using microscope slides as they are nice and thin and I was lucky enough that they fit perfectly height wise, now I need to cut the glass and the wooden rails to size before any gluing can be done.

I also took time off from my orders to build two pieces of furniture, I had a deadline and finished both of these in eleven days. The first is a 19th century French washstand, the original was build from pine, I used Oregon pine for mine.

I think this piece lends itself well to all kind of uses, I used a granite look melamine to imitate the slate of the original.

And here is the original full scale washstand that I copied.

The second piece is a lovely Regency Etagere from 1840. I need more books for this one!

The original was made from Rosewood, I made mine from some mahogany sheets that I had because I didn't have time to cut and sand the wood I really want to use for this, a South African wood called Candlewood, it has a very nice grain and color that resembles Rosewood very well and I will make some again later this year in the Candlewood.

The reason for the rush, they were for class proposals, I will be teaching for the first time later this year, looking forward to it and kind of dreading it at the same time, first time nerves I guess! I will tell you later when and where when all the details has been loaded onto the website.

Have a great week
Elga