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.