Very Little Progress

Next To Nothing Done.....

It was One of THOSE weekends, Dear Readers, the sort when no matter where you turned there were things that needed doing and even when projects got started with the Best of Intentions.... it seemed as though Nothing got Done! The Weather didn't help, because after what had seemed like a promising start to Spring.... we were met with more Winter on Friday.... (certainly only the Cold and Unappetizing Leftovers of what John of Merriman Park had to endure...) but still, it quite dashed all hopes of spending time digging in the Garden!

And when that Spring urge to dig the garden is thwarted.... 

it sends me into a Spring Cleaning mood....

Which fortunately only lasted Part of the Weekend....

Because, like Mole in "The Wind In The Willows".... 

there comes a point where one just Has to say "hang whitewashing" and run off to play!!!

Which is what I did around 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon! 

I realized I was Desperate to get Something done on my mini projects!

So I started in on the Ceiling of the Chinoiserie Bedroom in the Tree House....

Remember where I left off with the realization that the ceiling was too low for the bed....?

Sorry for the dark picture.... 

but here you can see I have added the gilded ceiling trim at the top of the walls....

And because the chimney is at an angle... 

I decided to "round off" the other corners of the room....

By putting more trim across the corners.....

And filling the gap with ceiling.....

Leaving the middle "octagon" open for a Domed ceiling 

high enough to fit the bed.....

Here you can see the opening from below..... 

All that was accomplished Weeks ago, Dear Readers, 

leaving me with the next step of Designing the Dome.....

Which is where I started on Sunday evening....

I will NOT bore you with the exactness of my method... 

because it is so far from exact as to be Laughable!

The Room is un-square to begin with... so all the angles are unique.....

So I cut a paper pattern and I Wing it... 

It just has to have slits cut out of the edges... 

and the sections need to be longer than the flat ceiling measure....

So when they are folded up the sides are glued together.....

And the over-all width of the "Dome" is now equal to the original flat width of the Ceiling....

And then I wanted to add some more trim.....

So I carefully cut and mitred the central "octagon"  pieces....

None of them are the same... 

but they had to fit in the oblong section of the middle....

After gluing them in place I wanted to test the look.....

But it isn't done yet.... I couldn't leave it alone....

I thought it needed gold "ribs" over the joined sections....

But, like many half grown teens... 

it still looks half finished to me......

It is nowhere near what I have envisioned....

But it is as far as I got on Sunday!

And the Other project I tried to work on this weekend, Dear Readers, 

was the stitching on the Tiny Bed curtains.....

Which you can see here below....

 

Oh, you think it looks Exactly the Same as last week???

Well, if you look VERY closely, 

you will see that I added the stitches at the Center of the Rose blossom,

as well as the darker row of stitches on the petals!

Just How long will this take to finish...?

And speaking of How Long Things Take TO Finish.....

I have just Realized that this is the Third Anniversary of this Blog!!!

And Oh, Dear, that prompts one of those 

"let's see where we are with all the Dollhouses" moments....!!!

The Book Nook is still waiting for Books.....

The Wizard is still working on potions in the Lord's Chamber of the Castle....

So far he has not succeeded in Magically finishing The Chamber....

Hazel got tired of waiting outside for a House of her own....

So she came to visit in The Lovely Old Dollhouse....

Where nobody Ever cleans up the Kitchen.....

(But Pie and Tea and interesting conversation seem to be Always available..!)

 Victor and Joanna are still entertaining themselves in the Living Room....

Playing music only they can hear......

 And in the Castle.....

The Chapel is still just as I left it..... 

Murals half done.... floor unfinished....

And Anna Maria and Samuel Whiskers 

are still discussing whether it would be a good home...

While the Tree House is under Construction....

Ah... the Tree House!

That Project begun almost a year ago....

And Sooooo Far from Finished!

And I cannot even bring myself to Look inside the Cupboard House.....

Waiting patiently in the background.....

Can it be I have Spent the Entire Year building the Tree House???

And No, I didn't even finish the Spring Cleaning!

What a Year it has been.....

The Progress has all been So Very Little...!

But Next to Nothing is Done....!

Curtains!

The Well Dressed Bed....

I was Procrastinating, Dear Readers, so what I have to show you this week is not at all what I had Intended to be working on! But since the results of my Procrastination were SO pleasing to me...... I couldn't wait to share them with you! Some of you may have noticed that I have not mastered the art of making Curtains for my dollhouses.... and this is in part because I love the way windows look with no curtains... and so my attempts are mostly just lace scraps pinned over the windows! And while I like my windows to have no curtains.... I think all beds should have them! I can blame it on my Medieval Tendencies.... because when you think about it, Historically they put curtains on the beds Long before they started putting curtains at the windows!So it is that I have from the very beginning envisioned the bed in The Folly tucked into that nook and draped with sumptuous curtains! I even knew exactly which Fabric I wanted to use.... and I was pretty sure that somewhere in all my "supplies" I had a beaded fringe that might be perfect for the trim!

And because I was procrastinating, I thought I needed to find that beaded fringe.... 

just to see what it would look like with the fabric... 

It took a while, but I DID find it!

 

 Here I am "Testing" the fit of the fringe 

on the quickly thrown together "Test" sample of the fabric,

and because I was just testing things, I didn't take many pictures of the process.... 

It was just slow and careful stitching of slippery fabric to wiggly beaded fringe, 

after all... just "Test" stitching... 

to see if it would work the way I hoped... 

The stitching was very slow and took much of the afternoon....

(This is that glitter strewn gauze that I use so often for my "Smoke effects" in my fireplaces...

 and the glitter pieces for candle flames....)

You can imagine my surprise when the beaded fringe turned out to be EXACTLY the right length!!

So then I had to do a "Test" of how it fitted in the opening for the Bed Nook......

Just thumb-tacked in place temporarily....  

And, of course I just Had to see how it would look pulled back to either side....

So I quickly wrapped a fine piece of gold thread around the curtains 

and attached it to the thumb tacks...

And then I thought we should see it with the lights on... 

even though it is the middle of the afternoon.....

Aaah..... that is Really looking Just the way I had Imagined it would!!!

Even though it is just Temporarily pinned in place...... 

because the bed still isn't even made up....

Can you imagine sleeping there?

And I had to take more pictures the next morning.... 

because the sun was shining into the room.....

Would you close the curtains when you slept...?

And let me bore you with some more pictures.....

I was procrastinating.... so I had to play for a while.....

and added some trinkets to the mantle...

(the books are some of Dark Squirrel Victoria's Divine creations...!)

And then Joanna heard there was work being done on The Folly.....

So she had to come and have a look....

She noticed the decorations right away.....

I has been such a long time since she visited at The Folly....

She really couldn't remember whether the curtains had been there before.....

But she was fairly certain she would have remembered such a Gorgeous Fringe...!

And the mattress.... as old as it looked... 

she was sure it hadn't been there when she last stopped by...

It was surprisingly soft for such an old mattress!

But after so MUCH Procrastination, Dear Readers, 

I Did finally get started on the project I had been intending to work on! 

And what was that, you ask?

Curtains, of course! 

Tiny Bed curtains for the Pagoda bed in the Tree House! 

But it already has curtains, I hear you say.....! 

Alas, those are just the lace Under-curtains.....

I really wanted it to have embroidered silk curtains... 

And I wanted to use that green silk.... 

in particular I wanted to have the gold fringe edging of the silk be the edging for the curtains!

Which meant carefully figuring out How I was going to embroider the silk!

Here you can see I have basted the green silk to a piece of muslin.... 

so the whole piece can go into an embroidery hoop.....

And if you look very carefully you can see that I have added some stitched guide lines.... 

so I know the area I am to embroider within....

And then I dug out my Treasure worth almost more than Gold itself.....

I inherited some of my Grandmother's sewing things....

These are Antique Wooden spools of Silk Sewing Thread!!!

In a lovely assortment of Rainbow colors.....

And because I have not Embroidered anything in Quite a few years....

I am just Testing....

(Which really means making it up as I go...)

Starting with a vine in green silk... using a simple back stitch....

 

I started with the curtain that will face the back wall.... 

so I have room to make mistakes...

And I added the flower "branches".....

And started on the flower blossoms.... 

in red, mauve and coral.....

Using a simple satin stitch....

It is supposed to end up looking like "Crewel" Embroidery... 

a style often worked in wool and having varied and exotic flower and plant forms...

So I am just making the shapes up as I go.....

One flower after another.....

Although I did make myself a rough sketch as guide....

To keep the stitching at the right scale.....

Each curtain will be two and a quarter inches long....

But because I Procrastinated so long in starting... 

It is a long way from done!

But I am really NOT sorry that I was procrastinating.... 

especially when at the end of the afternoon as the sun was setting, 

It reached all the way across my house and shone into The Folly.....

A slice of sunlight just hitting the Window Perfectly.....

Casting the beaded Fringe Aglow....

Oh, I LOVE that magical light!!

And even though they are not Finished....

Neither the Tiny Embroidered ones, nor the Sparkly Beaded ones....

Yes, I  do think Every well Dressed bed should have Curtains!

Flashback!

A Dream Within A Dream.....

I can Barely believe it, Dear Readers, but it was a weekend of (Almost) NO Minis! What? How could That happen, I ask myself... as I wrack my brains for Something to Post about! But, Alas, it is true.... due to Taxes and the first weekend of the Gardening Season.... all my Time was consumed by RL activities! Well, Almost all my Time.....because I am incurably absorbed in my Mini worlds.... but I will get to that in a minute! First I want to share with you a few of the Small Improvements that have been made in one house or another over the past months. It often happens that when I cannot make my mind up about a detail of my Current obsession... the Quarter scale Tree House.... I find myself working on details of the Larger scale houses... but I never get around to sharing them here with you! So I will welcome this opportunity when I have nothing new in the Tree House to report about, to show you some of these small details.
As you may be aware, I am trying to complete the wiring and hence all the Lighting, for The Folly. And I have always imagined that the house was originally built before the era of electric lighting, and so all the lights would have been added after the house was built. This is important in deciding what style the lights should be... because none of them are "original" to the house! So it is that I have imagined the Bathroom is an After Thought as well.... it was probably added where originally there was just a closet..... So you will have to forgive me if my Imagination just would not get past a "bare" lightbulb as the lighting for this room! Sometime last Winter I decided to give a try to making the fixture that holds the bulb.......

You can sort of see it here below.....

along with the "pull chain" made of beads.....

It is made of layers of card stock glued together and painted gold.... 

it ended up a little large for the scale.....

but close enough to work in this small room....

where at first I was going to just hang it crudely from the ceiling.....

 

But having seen on another blog, the beautiful job of attaching just this sort of bulb in an attic setting.... (Thank you Brae for the Inspiration!)

I decided to try my hand at a better attachment, and came up with this.....

I built a ceiling panel with a metal "collar" for the wiring....

Which looks So Much better and more realistic!

And when I got all the wiring hooked up....

 (more weeks of passing time...)

You can see the effect with the light on!

Isn't that Brilliant?

As for the other little "Flashback" I wish to show you, Dear Readers, 

it has to do with another Little Person who came to live in my Doll World ....

We were at The Cape last Summer and I found her in that Museum I visited... 

and she just looked like she needed to come home with me....

But you might recall that after last Year's Wedding Extravaganza.... 

I had banished all my Dolls to remote Locations.... 

(Temporarily, you understand,)

so that I could Concentrate on Finishing some of their Houses!!! 

(The Stories have a way of Distracting me from Building...!)

And one of those "Remote Locations" happens to be a bookcase in my Living Room....

Where I set up some "Temporary" Vignettes....

Celeste and Harold are still visiting a cafe under the stars.....

 

Pollyanna and Arthur are still headed off for their Honeymoon....

And Daphne and Will are still gazing into the Fountain of Dreams in a Garden....

Which is where they have all been ..... 

in Suspended Animation..... for an Entire Year......!!!

While I am Absorbed in building the Tree House

(Which I hadn't even Dreamt of when I put them here...)

And all this year I have glanced into these Vignettes 

and Imagined the Worlds they are in....

Until this weekend when I had an idea....

Or was it a Dream....?

 

They were standing at the Well of Dreams, after all.....

What are they Dreaming of....?

And Where are they......

 

A Garden of Dreams that Seems so Familiar....

What is Daphne's Dream...?

Or, rather... Who is Daphne's Dream...?

What is her Name...? 

And What is She Dreaming of....?

Can they see each other...?

Do they Know each other...?

Can they Touch......

Or is it Just a Dream......???

I am Afraid I do not yet know the Answers, Dear Readers!

All I did was grab a couple of minutes to cut some pages from an old wall Calendar 

to see how they fit as backdrops for this little Vignette.....

And the Rest remains to be seen....

A Flashback.....

And A Dream....

Within a Dream....!