Sew So little...
The Nanny's Room, Dear Readers has always been the destination for this Grand four poster bed... well, at least since it was superseded as the Grandest Bedstead by The Pagoda Bed residing in the Paradise Garden Chinoiserie Bedroom that is! It was my first attempt at a Grand Bed for the Tree House... and pretty quickly became the Second Best Bed... relegated to the attics and guest quarters and made good use of by the Nanny when she took charge of the Nursery. (This was a long time ago!) It has waited patiently for years to be dressed and finished for use in this room. A year ago when my attention finally returned to The Tree House, I gave it a "dark walnut" stain using some minwax stain pens I had come across and am finding to be miracle workers on this whole project! (No mess! No spills! Hardly any odor! Quick, Easy, perfect!) And I have always envisioned this as a classic "curtained" four-poster bed.
Inspired by beds like this one....
And this one.... both of which were current exhibits
in the Governor's Mansion Museum at
Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia,
where I visited just after I had begun
The Tree House construction in 2012.
These are the best of the best of Colonial
American household designs,
eighteenth century fashion and construction
inspired and imported from Europe.
The fabrics were "Indiennes" cotton
printed and manufactured in India most likely,
but imported through England.
Certainly American Colonies did not yet have
the workmanship and materials to produce
such fine patterned cloth.
And so you can see in the top photo I am testing
a small amount of a very similar cotton print,
a beautiful scrap of Liberty of England printed cotton
to be used for the bed-curtains.
And rather than line these tiny curtains....
I am thinking of having an inner curtain
of this lovely printed sheer gauze.....
here testing the compatibility of the
patterns and colors for this room!
I stumbled across this scrap in my fabrics trove
a few months ago and thought it would
be just the thing for this room.
But before we can get to the bed curtains,
we must first "make up" the bed!
Starting with the mattress...
If you have been reading this blog for a while
you might recognize this scrap of cloth.
I have used it before on the mattress
for The Folly Bed-nook sleeping platform,
and again for the mattress for
The Pagoda Bed in The Tree House
and most recently for the two little mattresses
I added to the Nursery Bunk-beds
(although I might not have blogged about them).
Needless to say, this was once an item of
clothing of mine (a blouse in the seventies...!)
that reminded me so much of mattress ticking fabric
(a "thing" once upon a time)
that I saved the fabric for use "someday" for miniatures.
Here I am stitching two sides together
with a narrow band between for "thickness".
Here it has been turned "right-side-out"
and stuffed with a couple layers of cotton batting.
And here I am stitching the "welting",
stitching through the seams to strengthen them...
a standard feature of antique mattresses
in case you did not know.
Here I am testing it on the bed frame.
Yes, It appears to be a fraction too large...
but I'm going to use it anyway.
I want that effect of sticking out a little between the posts.
I have not "tufted" it... and I might not.
I think it would flatten it too much in this case.
Next up are bed-sheets and blankets!
I am going to be very sentimental here...
this is an old and worn very thin cotton
bed-sheet of my Mother's which she
gave to me a couple of years ago,
to use for miniatures rather than just be thrown away.
It is old and is made of very fine high thread count
cotton with a sweet rose garden print.
Even though the print is very large for this scale,
I decided the colors and fineness of the fabric
merited using it here for the bed sheets on the Nanny's Bed.
That it was my Dear Mother's only adds to that appropriateness.
Here you see the "bottom sheet" wrapped around the mattress.
(No "fitted" sheets were invented yet!)
I did not hem the sheet but wrapped it and
tacked it together on the under side.
I forgot to take pictures of the upper bed-sheet hemming
and the "blanket stitching" of the lovely very fine wool blanket
before wrapping them around the mattress.
But here you can see them being "tested" with the
lovely gauzy curtain propped in place.
But I confess, Dear Readers, that this is not
where I started on this project.... not at all!
For the longest time,
years and years, decades if I am honest,
I have wanted to make teeny tiny
patchwork quilts for the dollhouses.
Yes, I know I made a start with the quilt
Daphne and Renee are making for Grandpere,
but that is not what I have been dreaming of.
The question has always been "how small could I go?"
Well, it was time to find out!
I started by taking the Liberty cotton scraps
used for Grandpere's quilt and cutting them
into squares 3/8 inch to a side.
And stitching them together with very very
tiny stitches and even tinier seam allowance!
Gradually making "four-squares".
This cotton is so fine and high thread count
it can be stitched this small.
Not every cotton would work.
And it responds really well to "finger-pressing"
to open the seams and "press" them
without using an iron.
I gradually made enough four-squares
to stitch together a sixteen-square and so on.
Here I have made an early "test' in the nanny's Room...
are the colors right? .... is the size appropriate...?
can I really do this?
Yes, yes and Yes!
Here you can see the reverse side close up....
the seam allowance is about 1/16 of an inch,
and the resulting "patch" ends up being about
1/4 inch square when all sides have been hemmed.
Here is the first "sixteen"...
you can see only the four middle squares
are the true finished size.
Here it is on the bed before the
mattress has been constructed...
clearly its a "go"!
Here I have cut more little squares...
trying to center the interesting bits of the patterns....
even though I am not sure it matters in the long run...
it is too hard to predict the end result from the beginning patch.
This is twenty-four squares....
but you have to plan for the "shrinkage"
of the dimensions when hemmed.
And testing it on the bed with the mattress...
still a long way to go!
And once again testing it on the bed with
the sheets and blanket and the gauzy curtain....
I do believe the quilt will mostly hide
those sheets and blanket...
and we will need pillows too.
And not to forget the curtains!
There is still so far to go, Dear Readers,
But I am having a Huge amount of fun
Just sewing So little!
