Mini Automata

In 2006 on a trip to England I bought all of these little items in a miniature shop in Bath. I have always been fascinated by the little lion tamer automata toy that you can see on the far right, and always wondered who made it, well I discovered their blog today, enjoy!!! 

 http://stleger.tumblr.com/

Elga

Victorian Dollhouse Study

I haven't posted about my dollhouse for a while so I thought it was high time that I show you the study and how I did certain things. I prefer things like curtains to be removable for cleaning and wiring for in case anything goes wrong in the future. Here you can see the basic shell of the room, the middle floor plank is loose, the floor has a groove cut in it for the kitchen's light fitting wire, in the back of the wall there are two holes, one for the wire and one for the fireplace light.



On the left wall you can see two screws above the window, the curtain pelmet fits on here. The lamp's wire goes through a hole in the wall to the outside.



Here you can see the holes in the back of the pelmet that fits over the screws in the wall. The lace curtain are sewed to the curtain at the back, the curtain fits on a rod that fits into grooves on each side of the pelmet, this means that I can clean the curtains if a spider or any other creature decide to make this their home and trust me they do on occasion.



Here you can see the lamp's wire on the outside of the house going through a hole in the corner to the back of my house where all the wires will be hidden behind a chimney breast. The scullery closes against this side of the house so the wire won't be visible. Check under the label Victorian dollhouse if you want to read earlier posts that I wrote about this house.



My husband helped me with the fireplace, the front and back was made from a piece of galvanized steel. In this photo you can see the back of the fireplace, the loose piece of flooring is back in place as well as the hearth stone.



Here you can see the fireplace from the front, the molding around the arch was made from twisted wire.



The animals on top of the bookcase were antique fair purchases and carved from bone, the porcelain horse came from my grandma's sister and the hunting scene was painted by Anet Pearson. The rug was my first petit point rug.



I still need to finish the paint job on the pelmet, but I will do that once I have made the second pelmet for the window on the front of the house. The elephant on top of the High Boy is a Victorian chess piece carved from Ivory that I found at an antique fair. I bought the lamp in a miniature shop (I think it has closed down now) in Bath, England in 2006. A wing chair is on my to do list for the study. The painting above the desk is another one by Anet Pearson, unfortunately it seems as if her website has disappeared.



The floor above the study is still loose, when I start work on the third floor of my house I will complete the ceiling, I find it a lot easier to work on the walls etc. without the floor in place. I hope to get some work done on the parlor over this weekend.
Hope you all have a fun filled weekend!!!!
Elga

New Furniture

I have been working on a new piece of furniture these last 2 months and I am finally making some progress now that I have all my tools sorted out. I am using Mopane wood for this piece of furniture.Hopefully mine will look as good as the original when it is finished, this is an early 19th century sewing table with a sliding screen in the back to protect Milady's face from the heat of the fire and you can see it here.



I am actually making five of them and they all have owners already. Here you can see the 5 sets of fronts and backs, the scrap piece in the one back is where I milled out a slot for the sliding screen, quite a tricky little job. I am still going to cut off the square parts on the bottom of the legs, they help to keep everything square while gluing.

Elga

Victorian French Knot Rug

The lap stand has really proved its weight in gold, I am stitching a lot faster and easier than before. I have started a rug for the parlor of my Victorian dollhouse, I am using french knots again as I like the pile look that it gives to the rug, I found the chart here and there are lots more on this site to enjoy!!!!

Elga

Embroidery hoop turned into lap stand

I started a new French Knot rug a few days ago, this one is twice the size of the one I made for the dining room and I was really struggling to try and hold a hoop and make nice consistent knots, you kind of need 3 hands for that, coupled with the fact that I only have a certain short focal distance where I can actually see what I am doing, I needed a solution, BIG TIME!!!!! And here it is, a hoop turned into a lap stand. A local shop sells something similar, but knowing that I had wood at home, I thought I would make one myself.



Here it is without the embroidery, I am going to tell you how I made mine, because I know quite a few of you are stitchers too and maybe this can help somebody else. I started of with a hoop that I had, mine is just a bit larger than 12" in diameter.



I used wood that I had lying around in the garage, so I am only going to give length measurements, I don't think thickness and width are that critical. I started with the two short pieces that is glued to the hoop, they are 3 1/4" long, I cut out a slot where the hoop needed to fit in and filed it a bit round on the edges for the hoop to fit around it, I more or less just eyeballed the two sides to be more or less straight across from one another and just glued them to the hoop, holding it with a clamp while the glue was busy drying.



Here is a front view of the hoop glued to the two side pieces where you can see the curve. Next measure the distance between your two pieces of wood and deduct the thickness of your wood twice from that measurement, mine worked out to 10 7/8". Cut a piece of wood to that length, this is your bottom cross bar that will be glued and screwed to your base. Cut your two uprights next, mine are 12" long, the maximum I could make it, as I wanted to be able to use my magnifying lamp with it. Now glue and screw the two uprights to the cross bar. Next I drilled a hole 3/4 inch from the bottom into the two short side pieces that connects the hoop for the bolt, I suppose it would be easier to first drill the holes before you glue it to the hoop. I drilled two holes on each top of the uprights, one 1" from the top edge and the next one 2" from the top edge. I cut a base 5 1/4" wide and 17 " long from 1/4" thick MDF, but you can make it any size that suits you, now glue and screw your base and cross bar together. I am going to glue a piece of felt to the bottom of the base to protect my clothes from the screws.



You are almost there, next bolt your hoop part to the uprights, I used wing nuts as they are easier to tighten, I put a washer in between the uprights and the hoop supports as well as on the outside, the bolts I am using has a square piece on the shank, as you screw it tight it sinks into the wood a bit and will help prevent everything going loose in a hurry as you swivel your hoop. Now for the very last step, insert some embroidery and enjoy stitching!!!!!!

Elga

The Monster is actually a Gentle Giant and more tools..............

Although the Band Saw is big and scary looking I think it is going to be my favorite tool and it is the quietest of all my power tools, I love the fact that I can feed really hard wood through it slowly. I was able to cut wood less than than 1mm thick on it. As wonderful as the saw is, the wood still needs some sanding to get it really smooth. After buying the saw we had to come up with something that wouldn't cost a lot to make and after some internet searches we decided to use the lathe to make a drum sander. We just used what we had on hand, later we will make a longer drum, but this works great for now. The table consists of two pieces of wood that is hinged at the back and a screw in the front makes the thickness adjustment. This article describes the whole thing much better than what I can.



Here is the result of some sanding I did yesterday, I am very happy with how everything works and that I can now make my own sheets of wood. This is all local South African wood, the pieces on the left are Mopane wood and the one on the right is Candle wood. I see some furniture building in my near future :-)

Elga

Needlework

I spent the last month in stitching a chair seat, the two finished ones I stitched more than a year ago, long before I started my blog. There will be six in total, they are destined for six dining room chairs that will be made somewhere in the next year or so. I get bored easily so I chose this chart with six different animals :-)



When I saw the rug chart with the birds I knew it would go perfectly with chair seats. I made sure that I used some of the same colors for the rug and the Queen Anne chair seats to tie them all into a coordinating color scheme.



I started a hexagon quilt after a lot of talk on the subject over at the Petitpointer group, I am making it with the traditional English Paper Piecing method, one hexagon measures 1cm (3/8") from flat side to flat side, I am basing mine on an antique quilt from the 1800's. If you think making a dollhouse quilt with such small hexagons is crazy have a look here, it is almost unbelievable BUT definitely stunning!!!!!

Elga

Monster of a Band Saw

I added a monster of a saw to my workshop today. I am at the stage where I want to cut up hard woods into thin boards for miniature furniture and I mean HARD, I almost blew the motor of my little Proxxon table saw and realized that I need something much more powerful. I have made mistakes in the past with choosing tools, so I first did a lot of research on what tool professional woodworkers use to re-saw thick stock and they all use band saws, even for cutting wood into veneer and I figure the thicknesses we use in miniatures fall into the veneer category. Finewoodworking.com has a wealth of information for serious woodworkers and I find I can use most of their info for miniatures too. I am really looking forward to experimenting with this saw, now I need to learn how to change blades and set it up for properly for use. And I promise I will be CAREFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elga

Miniature shows

We had our annual Miniature Show in Johannesburg this weekend and I bought this lovely full scale furniture plan book, I am sure you will see some mini furniture from it in the future :-)



I couldn't decide which of the two Toby jugs I liked the most, so I bought both, they were from somebodies private collection. The silver egg cups are from Balgove Miniatures and the little mice are from a South African artist.



This little doily I bought from a different kind of show, an online show arranged by Shelley Norris, I am not sure when the next show will be but it sure is fun. The doily was made by Ludwina an IGMA artisan that crochets the most amazing fine and delicate items and she makes truly magnificent hand knotted miniature rugs.

Elga

Biblical Berlin Wool Work

I started this embroidery more than a year ago and finally finished it. It will hang in the top hallway of my Victorian dollhouse, well that floor hasn't been built yet, so it will take a while before it actually hangs on a wall. I stitched it with DMC on 48 count silk, the finished size is 5" by 4". It depicts the story of Jacob waiting for Esau and Jacob is not sure if Esau is coming in peace or not after all the years which explains the wary expressions on their faces. The chart is available from Roland Designs.

Elga