Bendy bits....

It was very exciting this morning to feel that both the cottages were at a similar stage of progress. After attending to some things today, the plan was that I would do the paintwork on all the stone - the exterior of Washtub Cottage and the various bits I did yesterday if they are dry enough.

I wanted a photo of both the cottages together so lined them up - and oh dear!  The front of Washtub Cottage has developed a distinct bend.  So it seems I won't be painting that part today at least :-( I did take the photo of both together.  I sat the roof on Toadstool Cottage to keep the chimney in place (yes, I've put the roof together).  The pieces of Washtub Cottage are by no means sitting in their correct places.

And I also took a photo showing the bend in the front of Washtub Cottage.  Even the entry porch appears in this photo to have a slight bend - but it doesn't. 

And yes, the pavement for the front of Washtub is uneven at the front, and yes, that was deliberate - I didn't want it dead straight so squeezed some of it a bit more than other bits.  But the bend in the front makes it rather difficult to sit it properly against the house so it is not sitting well on the pavement either.

Maybe the painting will wait until Sunday now and I might concentrate on the interior doors for both properties, and other details.

Baby, take a look at you now!

I have it on good authority that the whhole neighbourhood is thrilled with the developments at Toadstool Cottage and are hoping that the new owners will be able to start stocking the shop within the week.   Excitement is rife and the progress day by day is the main topic of conversation.

Today a lot of progress was made, so I know that they were all pleased.  Indeed, I think it is time that fixtures and fittings are ordered so that they arrive in time for the construction worker (me) to down tools.

First step today was to finish off the flooring with the lighter coloured paint, applied with a sponge and dragged to create a nice grain effect.  While that was drying I glued the ground floor partition into place, holding it at 90 deg right angles with some Lego blocks. It looked really good sitting there.  I wish I'd angled the cottage a bit more when I took the photo though.

It's

It's always surprising the little things that suddenly make a huge difference to a piece you are constructing - this time it was putting in this wall.  The cottage started to feel like a cottage once that was in place.

The ceiling beams for Toadstool were much easier to paint than the ones for Washtub were because they were painted before they were put in place.  I wasn't sure how they would look since they are just card rather than the matchsticks but once in place they look really good.  Here they are cut out and painted ready to attach to the (pre-painted) ceiling:

And here they are in place on the ceiling.  Don't they look good?

Once the ceiling was completed I could put the ceiling/floor into place and now we were really making progress!

I put the shell of the cottage aside to dry thoroughly and went on with the clay for the chimneys.  There are two parts for this and they were quite fun to do though I do find that Creative Paper Clay does tend to become rather dry quite quickly in our summer while you are working with it.  I keep brushing a tiny bit of water over it though and that seems to work okay. 

While I had the clay out I also did the 2 chimney pieces and the pavement for Washtub Cottage.

At least the glue dries quickly too vbg.  Once the clay work was done and I had (again) cleaned off my hands etc, I was able to trace around each of the side walls.  Then I drew the beams on the outlines.  I carefully made them different forgetting that they were mirror images of each other so both ends have finished up looking the same despite my best efforts to make sure they didn't. 

Here they are before, all pristine and bare:

         :

And here they are after adding the 'beams' and distressing it all

 

Of course I couldn't leave it at that so here is the front too, before -

And after

And the back ceiling of the first floor as well

So there it is - well on the way now!  I fell in love with this cottage when I first saw it advertised on the Petite Properties site and it is living up to its promise, just as all the projects do that I have bought from them.  Each so different yet each so enjpyable and full of character.

More tomorrow.........see you then!

Making progress on Toadstool Cottage as well.

For some strange reason I'm a bit tired today - can't imagine why vbg.  Spent most of the day doing a big tidy-up of the house - in particular my not-so-mini mess.  The surface I work on in the lounge room is about 2ft x 18ins but that doesn't stop me from spreading far and wide.  Very far and wide!  So cleaning and organising was definitely in order.

 I am happy with the clay on Washtub today - it has dried beautifully overnight, and looks even better than it did last night.  The edges of one side have shrunk a tiny bit but I will fix that when I have the clay out again  (this is a warts-and-all blog so I'm telling it all). 

 Feeling much better about the house and also feeling much more organised, I then dived into the next steps on Toadstool Cottage, leaving the clay on Washtub Cottage to dry for another day.  There's not a lot to show you, but  I'm pleased with the progress.  I sponged two or three coats of parchment coloured Folk Art paint on all the pieces that will be painted - the interior and exterior of the walls, the inside of the roof pieces and the ground floor ceiling.  While each coat of paint dried, I worked on the dividing wall on the ground floor.  This involves drawing the 'beams' on to thick paper or thin card then cutting them out with a scalpel.  It is not a quick process, but once it was done and adhered to each side of  the dividing wall it was worth it.  A coat of brown paint, distressing with darker brown paint and it looks great.

I decided to do the floorboards before I did the beams on the ceiling for the ground floor - my hands were fairly sore after doing the earlier beams for the dividing walls.  I am quite comfortable doing the floorboards using the strips of thin card now, and really like using this method.  In fact I have used it on other projects too because I like it so much.  I cut the strips of card, stuck them to the floor and painted them with the first coat and left them to dry overnight.

In between all of this I managed to get the pieces sponged with parchment paint and  the walls were ready to assemble.  I glued them together and left them to dry overnight as well.

I really feel that Toadstool Cottage is well on its way now. 

. 

Just couldn't stop today!

Soooo much accomplished!  I  am getting so much pleasure from doing this cottage.  Today - or I should say yesterday I suppose since it is now 3am - I was on such a roll and despite a few setbacks and spilling my glass of water all over everything twice (tired = clumsy even if I don't feel tired) the walls are painted and assembled.  I did them in parchment, with talcum powder mixed through the paint to make it the thickness of cream then used a fairly coarse brush as though it was a  stencil brush to put the paint on with a little bit of texture.  Not as much as when I do the exterior of a building with the same technique - then I make the mixture much thicker, and make a more definite texture.  But I wanted the surface of the walls not to be completely smooth, to add to the rustic feel.  Then I distressed the walls a bit.

The door is fitted to the dividing wall for the ground floor.  Here it is being tried in place.  I've made it so that it sits open.  You can just see the faint distressing on the walls here in this photo.

The ceiling of the ground floor went in, and the cottage was really taking shape - it was very exciting.  Peter went off to work around this time - his hospital has 10 hour night duties and it takes nearly an hour to drive there and then to take report, so he leaves quite early.  As I've said before, I'm not very good at going to bed early if he's not home to nag me, and I was really on a roll so I did the dividing wall for the first floor then started the clay work on the little entrance section while I waited for all the glue to dry properly.  Even though today is cooler than it has been, it is warm enough that it set solid within a reasonable time.

So I went ahead and started to do the clay work on the exterior side walls.  The main problem I had with that was to prevent the clay from drying out too fast while I was scribing it.  I am hoping that it will actually dry with a few cracks in it to add a bit more authenticity. 

While I was doing the clay work I watched some shows I had recorded on the DVR - by the time both sides were done I was partway through one of the shows so naturally I 'had' to start on the front of the cottage!  And here it is, all freshly covered in it's coat of clay, and of course it probably won't be dry enough to paint tomorrow  - I mean today - since it is so late - early - but it's done and I can't express how satisfied I am!  Here it is showing all the pieces, from the right:

And - drum roll please - ta-da- here it is from the left side, just because I like this side better vbg.

I hope the markings show up - they seem to.    I love the windows in the front, don't you?  The curved tops are a really nice touch.  When I was putting the clay on the front I spent a long time working it around the inside of the window openings, making it as smooth as I could on the rounded top and as straight as I could on the other three surfaces.  They are not perfect and I didn't try to make them so, because that's not how I envisage them.   But they are such a sweet feature.

The story for this cottage is slowly revealing itself to me, but I won't reveal it yet.  And now it is nearly 3.40am and I suppose I really must go to sleep or I'll be too tired and  won't be able to do anything later today, let alone minis!

Keep watching this space!

A bit more on Washtub Cottage....and other drama

Today was rather an emotionally exhausting day for Peter and for me.  Peter needed to go into the city centre (Sydney) to renew his Nurse's Registration for another year.Now that we both qualify for a Senior's Card and get concession fares  it isn't worth the cost of petrol when he can get a cheap fare.  If he can catch an express train  it takes a bit more than an hour to get into the city.  Yes, we are a long way out west!  Still part of Sydney, but Sydney encompasses several other parts that are 'cities' in their own right.

Pete caught the bus to the station, showing his Senior's Card for the concession fare, and returned his wallet to his pocket.  When he arrived at the station he went to get his wallet for the train fare and it was gone.  So you know what was involved for the rest of the day: search the area, then returning home so he could report the loss to all the relevant parties. It was bad enough losing the $100 that was in the wallet but it was worse losing his licence and other things in there.

He reported the loss of licence - no problem sir, just bring in your birth certificate and apply for a replacement.  Yes.  Well.  We have our birth certificates safely filed in a folder packed away - somewhere.  Well you say, no problem - get a duplicate!  Not so easy.  Peter was born in England, not Australia. So  after a couple of fruitless hours in the hot room without airconditioning we had come to the conclusion that today we would have to pull everything out and unpack it all to find it.  He can't be without his driving licence.

Quite upset by it all, he cancelled his night duty shift.  Then several hours later we had a phone call - someone had seen the wallet as they were entering a motorway quite a few kilometres from where it was lost (stolen?).  They had been good enough to stop and pick it up then contact us to let us know.  They live a long distance from us so are going to post it and we should have it in a couple of days.  What a relief!  The money was gone of course. But the other things in it are even more important.  Once they are back we can let the police know that the licence has been returned (hopefully) and all will be well.

As you can imagine, all this delayed progress on the cottages.  However once things settled down I did get a bit done.  I am quite pleased with the floors of both now they are painted:

Washtub Cottage - ground floor

Toadstool Cottage - Ground Floor

I also painted the ceiling for the ground floor of Washtub.This was an interesting exercise.  As I've said before, I am not very good at cutting in when painting - I used to be, but my multifocal glasses now seem to make it difficult to judge.  So as I painted the brown it got onto the cream; when I painted cream, some got onto the brown.  And so it went.....

But in the end I decided enough was enough, and went on with 'distressing'  the cream areas.

So it was pleasing progress - but again not a lot achieved on Toadstool Cottage.

Progress on Washtub Cottage

Welcome to my newest follower, Kylie - my oldest daughter.  She has been promising to look in on my blog for a while now and in fact while they were here at Christmas the boys were very interested in Sunflower Garden Centre (especially Luke) and they had a look at the finished result on the blog after they went home.  It is lovely to have you as a follower darling - hope you visit often to keep an eye on what your mama is up to vbg!

Today I did a bit more on Washtub Cottage, but only on the ceiling/floor of the first floor.  The paperclay isn't really perfectly dry yet and it had cracked in one place on Washtub's floor.  So I patched that up with some more clay and left the floors of both cottages to dry some more.

A lot of time was also spent trying to work out a problem.  One friend told me that when she tried to see my full profile on this blog she got a message that the page was dangerous.  Apparently a lot of people are getting this message on their blogs at the moment when they try to add photos etc, and it seems to be a malicious prank of some sort.  I was unaware of it because I don't get the message - only people who try to access my profile, apparently.  Let's hope Blogger fixes it soon!  I couldn't find out on the forum how to remove the message or fix the situation.  If anyone knows please tell me!

Peter was going shopping and I asked him to buy me some craft matchsticks and a piece of balsa wood - it is easier than trying to find mine in the workroom at the moment, especially in the heat today!  That meant I could do the beams on the ceiling of the ground floor piece. I got quite enthusiastic about this and not only attacked the balsa wood main beam with my craft knife to rough up the edges but did the same on the matchsticks too.

And here it is with the first coat of dark brown paint over it.  This will be followed by another coat of dark brown, then light brown, then cream.

While the paint was drying (it didn't take long!) I cut the pieces for the floorboards on the top side which of course is the floor for upstairs.  As recommended I do this by eye so that they are not perfectly regular .  In later projects Bea uses a method of just drawing on the floorboards, but I really like using the strips of paper and have used them in the Yule Tide Shop as well.  I didn't paint this lot with black though, I thought I would try it with dark brown to see what the effect is like. 

Apart from being a bit bumfly where I removed a couple of pieces because I kept forgetting to make joins in the 'floorboards' it has come out really well.

When this paint dries properly I will sponge on light brown paint, dragging it in the direction of the boards to give a grain effect, which is the method that is used in all the projects.

I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get to do anything on Toadstool Cottage today, but we are all very tired.  It was another warm and humid day today.  Last night stayed at 26degC all night and it was very humid too and we found it difficult to sleep.  We are expecting a southerly change about midnight tonight - that for us ibrings a cool change, and it will be very welcome indeed.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a more productive day, seeing progress on both cottages :-)

Toadstool Cottage and Washtub Cottage started

 I want to show you the progress as I build two cottages, Toadstool Cottage and Washtub Cottage.  So I will share my Mini Journal for each as I go.  I won't necessarily be doing the same thing on each step-by-step of course, but I have started them together while I had the Creative PaperClay out.


But first, to go back a bit in time for Toadstool Cottage and take some notes from my Journal:


8th February 2011
It will be an interesting experience working on this cottage because I plan to work on it at the same time as I work on Washtub Cottage. It seems crazy but I’ll see how I go. I want to do this cottage because I love it, but I haven’t been able to decide what to do with it. Last night, or in the early hours of the morning, I was unable to sleep and trying to decide which of my desirable quarter scale properties would provide the most promising premises for a couple of lovely ladies to take over for a quilt shop (having decided that I needed another one because the Town Square shop was just too small for everything). The solution was there for me – Toadstool Cottage of course.


Both it and Washtub Cottage provide the spacious quarters I want. Plenty of room for lots of fabrics, quilts on display, a classroom area, books for sale, notions and accessories and necessary items.  Even room for a refreshment area for that necessary break. But there were advantages for Toadstool Cottage. As I said, I haven’t been able to decide what to do with it. Its ‘story’ hadn’t revealed itself to me yet. Then the name ‘Toadstool Cottage Quilts’ was rather quaint, hinting at woods and fairies, whereas ‘Washtub Cottage Quilts’ didn’t have the same charm to my mind.


So it was decided. It means of course that I cannot do the inside with the dark and weathered effect to the extent that I’d like to do, but I have heard that the whole neighbourhood is delighted that this charming and historic house has gained a new lease of life as well as adding so much to the opportunities for using valuable artistic and practical skills, not to mention increasing the opportunities for social interaction. It appears that this venture will be most successful!


9th February 2011
First step was, as usual, to type each step of the process up on a separate page of a Word document. I take a photo of every step for my personal mini Journals, and then summarise from this for my blog. I have always taken photos of each step and Journalled for every miniature project I’ve done and it is fascinating (for me) to look back over them. I have them in display books; they are for my interest and document my growth in this amazing hobby.


19th February 2011
I had hoped to have started before this but tonight I finally did the PaperClay on the ground floors. This cottage has fairly regular flagstones on one side and irregular stones on the other so it was all freehand and easy. I’m quite happy with the result and will leave it overnight to dry. .

I know it's not the clearest of photos, the paperclay was still damp and white is not easy to photograph with a flash but it gives a bit of an idea. 

I spent quite a long time considering whether or not to ‘update’ the cottage floors by doing them in timber since it is going to be a modern patchwork shop.  However in the end I decided to go with the original floors.  If need be I can cover them with ‘timber’ later on.

And now for Washtub Cottage:

8th February 2011

I’ve finally plucked up the courage to make a big effort to tackle Washtub Cottage. I’m not happy with my efforts at the brickwork on the Corner Store and want to make sure that this lovely cottage turns out more to my satisfaction. I know I should see it as a growth process, and indeed I do but I also know I could have done better. I was impatient and didn’t wait until I got a proper scribe for the clay and I also rolled the clay too thick and should have re-done it. So I have learned from that. I don’t want to end up with a feeling that I can’t do the clay work properly. So while I want to do Toadstool Cottage as well to make it a Quilt Shop, I also want to do Washtub Cottage because I love it.



Tonight I went through all the kits and made sure that the four of them each had its own full quota of pieces. I was a tiny bit concerned because the plastic bags tend to split and there were a few adventurous pieces floating around in the container. Fortunately none had escaped and all were returned to their respective bags and those bags secured more adequately.


Then I went through the Washtub Cottage book and read the instructions once more. After that I typed them out, one to a page. That is so I remember to take photos of each step for my Washtub Cottage Journal. Highlights from the Journal will be posted on my ‘Snippets’ blog and shared with my readers. Goodness knows, it’s about the only real encouragement I get apart from Jan and other mini friends on my groups!



It’s only 12 weeks now, I think, to the Sydney Fair so it’s time to get serious about the things I am going to exhibit. I want to exhibit Flower Pot Cottage but I am not going to construct that until Washtub Cottage and Toadstool Cottage are done. So that’s roll-up-the-sleeves-and-get into-it time. Because there is also the Town Square to landscape and the other shops still to go, there’s the other 1:48th cottages to do and display and there are a lot of quarter scale flowers to make!



Only had two hours’ sleep last night, so had plenty of time to think and plan miniatures among other things (from 11pm to 6.30am). But I still haven’t decided which other cottages to exhibit.



19th February 2011
Had hoped to have started this cottage before now but tonight I finally took the first step and did the ground floors in Creative Paper Clay for both Washtub Cottage and Toadstool Cottage. Washtub Cottage has a quarry-tiled effect on one side and flagstones on the other side. It is painstaking work doing the quarry tiles 1/8” apart but I’m quite pleased with these ones. I have made a more satisfactory scribing tool by taking a duplicate small stylus I had, and sanding it down to a very fine sharp point.at each end  It was surprisingly easy if time consuming, and well worth the effort.  Now I have a proper scribe instead of trying to use a wooden skewer or toothpick it makes things much easier and the lines much finer. 


It was difficult to get a good photo of the white clay for the floors with the flash. However I want to photograph every step so here we are:

Keep watching this space - hopefully each day will show some progress on one if not both of these buildings!  And there'll be more interesting photos as they grow.

And here's the next one....

But first I must welcome Pacqui and Sherry.  Thank you both so very much for becoming Followers.  I really appreciate you taking the time to visit my blog and for signing on.  Please do feel free to leave comments - it's such fun to share with other miniaturists!  I truly hope you enjoy reading my ramblings and that you'll visit often.


And now here it is – China Cottage, the 10th of the Town Square series and one of the prettiest, I think! Yes, again. The beauty of miniatures is that you can use colours that you can’t use in real life – just as some real life colours don’t work in miniature. For the China Cottage I used Folk Art ‘Rose Garden’ which is a rich but soft rose pink, and exactly matches the darker print on the wallpaper. I am disappointed that the colour hasn’t come out true in these photos of the cottage first built.

There was no greenery supplied with this cottage, the model had the base painted to match the green used on the trim. But the plastic ornamentation for the apex of the roof and the verandah more than made up for it! I chose to do the verandah section of the base in brown to resemble timber, and painted it to try and get a wood-grain effect. I decided not to highlight the posts on the verandah because by now I was a bit ‘over it’ all, having made a big boo-boo with what was supposed to be the second coat of white. As I was spraying it on, it looked rather odd and so I checked the can again to find that I was spraying not another coat of paint, but another coat of primer. It was making the first coat of paint all runny.


Several fiddly, sticky and frustrating hours later I had removed the gluggy mess and was able to start again. Then to top it off when I did the highlighting on the front door it would not go nice and neat like it did on the French Knot. So I left good enough alone vbg!


And here’s the interior of the completed basic shop (with the dresser straightened up – did you notice in the previous photo that it had fallen over?)

This second view of the interior showing the left side in has my hand to again give an idea of the size (or lack of size) of these shops. Even for quarter scale they are tiny.

The little dresser is lovely, and was part of the kit supplied. The next photo, of the right interior, shows the shelves that were also supplied. I decided to ‘offset’ mine on the wall. I was undecided whether or not to use the shop counter and till, but put it in these photos anyway because they came with the kit.

So that is what the shop looked like once it was constructed. The next step of course was to add my own bits and pieces to it.
 And here is the interior, after I added the bits and pieces. I ended up putting more wallpaper in the top section because the white looked a bit stark. And I put some of the flooring paper on the ‘floor’ as well. I made a shelf out of bits of left-over siding used in reverse, painting it brown to give contrast to the plates, and put four left-over plates on it instead of using them on the shelves inside as I had at first intended.

Here on the left you can see the dresser, with mainly blue plates on it. And I have put the blue teaset on this side, with those mischievous little cups sitting innocently in their saucers as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths! More about those shortly.

On the right I ended up with mainly pink – not by design, at first I was going to put the teaset in front of the pink and white plates and put something else on the lower shelf.

The plates were easy to make. A while ago by a stroke of luck I had found that some embroidery floss cards that had come with those plastic boxes divided into little sections that I’d bought to store my assembled quarter scale furniture in, had holes punched in them. But the punched-out pieces were still in them. And they were exactly the right size for plates. So I had painstakingly removed all the little circles and stored them away, and now they came in very useful.
 I found some photos of plates among my files and printed them out on normal printer paper. I had previously tried doing this on photo paper then punching them out, without a great deal of success. This time I cut the circles out (which I don’t do terribly well) and glued them to these perfect little rounds of card. When totally dry I gently rounded them a little with a stylus on a computer mouse pad then painted them with a semi-gloss fixative (didn’t have gloss or would have used that).


The teasets weren’t so easy. Why do I say those cups are mischievous? . They are plastic and come nicely attached to a stem, with the teapot on the top and four cups and four saucers on the sides. Painting them was easy enough, and I even did a gold rim around the cups and a gold handle and knob on the teapots. Then came the tricky part. They are the teeniest, tiniest little cups you ever did see, and trying to get them to sit on the saucer is a true exercise in patience! They do it beautifully for you at first, just to lull you into a false sense of security but they are only teasing! As soon as you put that little drop of glue on the saucer those cups show their spirit of mischief and get up to all sorts of tricks and you begin to think they’ll never stay put. In the end I did get them to stay but not necessarily in the positions I wanted them in.


I’ve taken a couple of close-ups of the dresser and the shelves. Looking at the dresser I realise that I haven’t put the tiny knobs on the drawers yet – I left them off while I was adding the plates so they wouldn’t be dislodged by the handling. Now I’d better put them on.

And here are the shelves on the right side.

I’ve used the same pink as I used for the exterior, and you can see that it matches the pattern on the wallpaper exactly.


So the interior is completed except for a couple of things to go on the counter – I rather think it looks a bit bare.

I did add some grass to the exterior, but haven’t added any greenery to this shop. I will end up with three (yes, three) of these darling buildings, but they won’t all look the same by the time I mix and match the bits with the two extras of other shops I will also have, and one of the differences will include the use of vines – so keep watching this space lol! It’s only ten weeks to the Sydney Fair so I have a lot of work to do.


In this photo the colour is more true, but a tiny bit dark.

And where is the cat, you ask? Well, even if you didn’t ask, here she is:

Sitting on the grass enjoying the sun, in the way that cats do!

Here it is....

.....just as I promised. 'The French Knot', number 9 in the Town Square series.  The name is Debbie Young's tribute to mini needleworkers who inspired her with a love of miniatures years ago, with a display of lovely rugs done in French knots.  In some ways I would have liked to have made this a sewing shop rather than a quilt shop but I only realised this morning that I could easily have done so because I have ordered extra 'China Cottage' kits and one of those would have made a great quilt shop.  Never mind, it will make a great haberdashery shop too if I decide to make one.

I took more photos in daylight and the colours have come out better.  I really do not like these energy-saving lights for photography. The views of the front and the side show that I really went to town with the flowering vines in the window boxes. 

And there is also a vine on the side wall.

I really like the green colour of the exterior; it complements the colours in the wallpapers really well.  Here is an overview of the inside.

A closer view of the right interior.  The quilt shelves on the ground floor are a kit from bjs miniatures, and comes with 5 dozen 'rolls' of paper fabric.  I have wrapped slightly different lengths of the 'fabric' around the cardboard pieces to vary the thickness of the rolls.  The bottom of the shelves had to be trimmed just a little to fit into the ground floor, and instead  of packing rolls of fabric under and on top of the shelves as well as really tightly into the shelves, I used some of them in the shelves supplied in the shop kit as well.

On the left side of the shop this view shows the wall display of sewing accessories that I showed you before.  I have cut  off the cutting mat section and put it under the windows.  My poor mini customers would not be able to reach the top of the display otherwise, it was right up to the ceiling.

On the first floor there is a sweet wall hanging on the wall.  Unfortunately the baskets of 'fat quarters' that were on sale don't fit on top of the shelves of fabric after all, so that needs some re-thinking.  The wall on the right still looks a bit bare to me. There are more cutting mats on display against the wall, on that side, but there needs to be something higher on the wall.

The table has clear signs that someone is starting a new project, with fabric spread out ready to cut and more fabric folded to one side.  The accessories are part of the lovely little table accessories I also showed you in an earlier post.  I haven't used them all, some I've 'hoarded' for another project.  I've just used the cutting mat, ruller and cutter.  The ruler and cutter are ready for use.  And the fabric is on the left because, like me, the stitcher is left handed and the ruler will be held on the right. 


You know by now that I always have a moggie in my projects and I'll leave it up to you to spot Mr, Dapper.  He's a lovely well-behaved gentleman, called 'Dapper' because he looks so smart in his black and white suit.

Back to the ground floor and the quilt rack has three quilts on display.  This was not glued in place, so that the photos of the wall display could be taken. There are three quilts on the rack, the middle one can't be seen all that well in the photos but of course the side ones can.  Here is side one:

And side two:

The quilt rack was a kit, and I am not sure where from at the moment.  The quilts are printies.

The shop kit came with little packets with pieces for the two small shelf units on the first floor, the table, and a rectanglular bit of wood for the spinning display rack with a white metal bit for the legs.  Here is a close up of the finished result for the spinning rack showing two of the sides:

And here are the other two sides:

First I made some 'pegboard'.  This was just typing a series of fullstops in a tiny font with two spaces between for a length of about 4" on the page of a Word document.  The next row I moved over 2 spaces and did another row the same, but the dots were offset (my husband insisted they had to be offset so I had to re-do the first lot I did vbg).  I printed this out but it was too large so I printed it again but this time set my 'options' to 'reduce by 50%' and it came out okay.

That part done, the timber sanded smooth top and bottom and painted, I wrapped the paper 'pegboard' around the wood and glued it.  Then I gave it a light spray with the fixative that I always use for anything printed out to stop it fading.

I had printed out a variety of mini patchwork book covers and patchwork patters and made the books up by folding them around some card or paper of various thicknesses.  Then I painted them all with some satin finish Modge Podge.  The fun part of course was to attach them to the display stand.  I have quite a few left over to use on another occasion if I want to.  The stand base will be glued in place, but a pin going through a hole in the base into the stand will allow it to rotate.  I'm really chuffed with this little accessory.  In fact I'm really chuffed with this whole little shop - another sweet one to swell the ever-growing collection.  And I can't resist showing you the inside once again.