The Adventure Begins!

In less than four hours I will go to the airport for my trip to Amsterdam and Castine, Josje will meet me at the airport, what fun! I hope I see some of you at the Rheda show on Sunday. Here are a few photos of the last ten months work, what a learning curve this was. Enjoy!

The Sewing Tables

The Gothic Chippendale Chairs

Tilt and Turn Tables

Rhode island Easy Chairs

Have a great weekend
Elga

Lots of progress and some news

First off all I want to apologize for being so quiet on all your blogs, since 23 April my phone line has been crossed with someone else's and my number is not working at all including internet access. At the moment I am reliant on the bit of mobile data available to me which is rather expensive in SA, so I am really just using it for e-mails etc, but today I just decided I have to do a post. I have made so many phone calls to the two companies involved (I can phone, from the person that I am crossed with number, most of the fault reporting numbers are fortunately toll free) that I am really sick and tired of the whole thing, apparently the turn around time in fixing faults are 7 working days and we had two public holidays over the last two weeks as well, so I just hope that it will all be fixed early next week. Well, enough of that, now on to miniatures.

I am busy making the knee brackets for the wing chairs, the chair on the right already has them in place.

The Chippendale chairs still need the front stretcher, the chair on the left has it's side stretchers in place but not glued, I need to take the measurement for the front stretcher directly off the chair, so the rubber band is just there to hold everything together for now.

I have started work on my last commission for now, a tilt and turn table. The central posts have been turned and I am busy with the three legs for each table, as you can see I am using jigs and pin-routing to make the little legs, you can see the original table that I am copying here.

I only have 4 weeks left to finish all my current commissions, today in exactly 4 weeks I will arrive in Amsterdam for 3 days of fun before I go on to the USA to attend Guild School at Castine. On Sunday 3 June I will go to the 1zu12 fair in Rheda, Germany with my friend and host Elly, I am really looking forward to it, as it will be my first international fair ever. And on Monday Elly will take me to visit Josje and see all her wonderful miniatures. Now don't you think I am in for a real treat?!?! And from Amsterdam I am going to New York where I will meet up with one of  IGMA's scholarship students, Mavis from New Zealand that I met on the Yahoo Petitpoimter group for 3 days of fun exploring NY before we go to Castine, so much to look forward too :-)

Have a wonderful weekend
Elga

Update: Good news, my phone line has just been fixed, now I have a lot of catching up to do on reading all your blog posts of the last 2 weeks.

Chair making tips

Each chair is different and so gluing them together needs careful thought if you want to end up with a chair that has all four legs touching the floor nice and square. In my previous post I showed you the Chippendale chair, today I want to show you how different the easy chair's back is. On the pattern you  can see that the easy chair's back legs leans further over than the feet and you need to take this in consideration while gluing the back together. I stacked 3 pieces of scrap wood on top of one another to make up the difference at the chair's feet, because this chair's back are square from side to side I didn't bother with a paper pattern, I just used bigger magnets because the little ones would just slide in under the chair side posts. I normally just glue all the stretchers, etc on to one side and when that is dry the next side. I also use tape for the first side as all the pieces normally starts falling out when I add the other side to keep everything in place, I take it off as soon as I have the second side in place and then carefully puts it in the jig to dry.

In this photo is the first step in making a nicely shaped cabriole leg, they are already glued to the front stretcher, it gives you something to hold on. On the right leg you can see where I used a dowel wrapped with sandpaper to round the 4 sharp edges, right click on the photo to open it in a new tab so that you can see better, the dull parts are where I sanded the leg. Remember to also round the foot of the leg.

I use fine sandpaper or nail filing pads and fine files to finish the shaping of the leg, I hope you can see the difference between the finished and unfinished leg. You can do this to any legs that you get in a kit too.

Have a great week.
Elga

Wednesday Pennsylvania Secretary: Adding the top dividers and Bargello embroidery

I cut all six dividers for the top part of the secretary, they are only 0.5mm thick and here is how I did it.

You have to be careful because the wood is so thin, the easiest way to get six matching dividers was to cut the wood a bit longer than needed in the back and gluing all six together just at the very back. Next I put them in the jig and cut them out by pin routing on the drill press and there you have six with perfect matching profiles. Next I cut off the extra bit in the back where they were glued together with the table saw.

You really need patience when gluing such little pieces, I do them one at a time and wait a good half hour to an hour before gluing in the next one, I use Lego to help keep them square and yes they do have a tiny groove that they are glued  into.

The top all glued together, now I need to make a back for it and a face frame where the doors will fit in. And this is what I do while I wait for glue to dry, embroidery.

I have started with the embroidery for the wing chair and I can predict that this is going to take a few years to complete. I just fell in love with the riot of colors ever since I first saw photos of this chair, I can't wait to see the real chair in June when I will be in New York for 3 days before going to Guild School in Castine. I am stitching this on 112 count (yes, you are reading right and yes, I am crazy, haha) using Florentine stitch, also called Bargello or Irish Stitch. I put the embroidery on a scaled print of the chair, the needle that you see at the top is only 33mm long (1 19/64"). I use +3 reading glasses together with my magnifying lamp to see this small count and then only just.

Have a great mini weekend.
Elga

Gluing a Wing Chair

This is how the Rhode Island Easy Chair looked last time when I showed it to you, since then I have turned the pad feet on the legs and today I glued it together.

Because of the angles on the seat rails I find cutting out my pattern and sticking it to a piece of Styrofoam and then using pins, the easiest way to keep everything aligned while the glue dries.

And here I am using the same pattern to keep the turned stretchers in place while the glue dries.

Next I glued the stretchers to the front legs, while the glue dries I just put the back in place without any glue to keep everything aligned. And cutting the tenons on the stretchers is no joke since their is no straight line in the whole thing, I drew the lines on with a pencil and then filed with a small square file until it is more or less right.

Clamping the chair between two flat pieces of wood is the best way to make sure all four feet touches the floor.

And now this chair still needs a whopping twelve pieces of wood to make the wings on each side.

Have a great mini weekend.
Elga

Updates on various projects

I haven't worked on the sewing tables for the last few weeks, I really just needed a break from them after working on them for the last 6 months, but I have just about finished stitching the petit point for it, just 3 more rows of white to go. The stitching is just a tad wider than 1 inch as the opening in the screen is only an inch wide. I found the chart in Raffaella Serena's book Berlin work Samplers and Embroidery of the 19th century, she charted it from an 1850's sampler that is in the V&A museum in London. I stitched the design with Pipers Silk on 75 count silk gauze.

I also started stitching a cover for the Queen Anne stool that I am making at our mini club over Feb and March. This time I am cross stitching on 60 count silk gauze once again with the Pipers silk. What you see here is the design for the four sides of the cushion, the central part will look different, the chart is part of Geometric patterns, an original Victorian chart that was digitized by Roland Designs in Norway.

On the wood work front I worked yesterday with my friends on our Wednesday project. We cut the dovetails on the top, bottom and sides for the top case of the Pennsylvania Secretary, it was the first time that I made dovetails, we used a jig, I am not quite happy with the fact that they are not symmetrical at the sides, but all the jointing will be covered by moldings in any case. I will check out the jig carefully before cutting dovetails for the drawers which will be visible. I also made a groove in the sides in the wrong place, fortunately that part will be completely covered with face boards and molding, I simply don't have time to do it over again. The five shelves has been cut and are ready to receive grooves for various dividers in the top and bottom of the cupboard. The wood is Imbuia salvaged from an old table, lots of this wood was imported from Brazil in the 1950's and 60's and was used widely for all kinds of furniture in South Africa.

I am also busy turning some more stretchers for the Rhode Island easy chairs that I am busy with. Next week I plan on turning the pad feet on the cabriole legs and starting to put them all together.

Wow, I am feeling tired all of a sudden now ;-)

Elga

2012!!!!!, It is going to be BUSY!!!!!

Just over a month ago I wondered what I am going to make when I am finished with the 5 sewing tables, well I decided to indulge myself and make my long planned dining room chairs and offered them for sale as well. The response was wonderful and one thing lead to another, some people thought a round table would be nice to go with the chairs and I am going to make this Tilt-top table together with the chairs, so I have more than enough to keep me busy until end May and then two more projects are already lined up for the second half of the year when I return from Guild School.

Here are few a photos of the sewing tables, work is slow because I ruined my table saw blade in experimenting with the African Blackwood, I think it wasn't the right blade to begin with, but this isn't the right time of the year for fast international post, so at the moment I can't cut any new pieces of wood. The candle slides have a stop which will prevent them from being pulled out all the way once the top is glued in, you can see the stop on the upside down candle slide at the left back. The little silver violin player on the scrap piece of wood is just preventing the candle slide to topple over, it will be okay once the  top is glued in.

Tomorrow I am going to start turning the little knobs for the drawers, I really need to have this project finished by the end of January.

I am also busy making this wing chair from the Metropolitan museum of art in New York, two from Rosewood and two from Blackwood, and yes I plan to upholster it with Bargello like the original, do check out the back of the chair, it is stunning.

Elga