24/03/2013

Paintings


 I have two passions; one is building my Miniature House and the other one is painting and drawing. Today I thought; "let's combine both  worlds; I'll paint something for my minihouse".  The pictures beneath show my working process.





As you can see I can almost completely change the picture while working on it....I let myself be surprised :D       
Finally, I chose the picture in the middle above to make a frame around it  and put it in the attic of my Miniature House.


 

17/03/2013

My way of making a mattrass



In the picture above you can see a mattrass I made for a bed in the attic of my Miniature House.
I learned this way of making a mattrass from a Dutch doll's house magazine (Poppenhuizen&Miniaturen, nr. 46, april/may  2000). I have seen several tutorials about making a mattrass on Blogspot by now, but this is the way I am used to doing it and I will show you in this post.



I start out by cutting a rectangle out of foam (2 cm thickness) .
The measurements of this rectangle are 7.3 by 14.1 cm.



Next I take a piece of thin cotton and iron on some non woven interfacing fabric (in dutch: vlieseline).
By using self made templates I drew the outlines of  3 parts of the matrass on this interfacing fabric:
A: 7.8 x 14.6 cm
B and C: both 7.8 x 8.2 cm



As you can see in the picture, I also cut a long strip (56 cm length and 2.6  cm width) out of the cotton.
 This is part D. Part D  will later be sewn between part A and part B/C.


The next picture shows that after cutting out part B,
I folded about 1 cm back and stitched it to prevent it from flipping back.




I then laid parts B and C next to part A and made the outlines match.
With some tape I temporarily attached B an C together,
making sure part B was the upper part and lying on top of C.





I used a self-made template to mark on part A all spots where the buttons will be attached
after the mattrass is stitched and filled with the foam.






 I then carefully stitched part D onto part A,
the stiches very close to the edge of the fabric (approximately 2 mm away from it).
The right sides of the cotton of part A and D are facing each other while stitching.
I made both ends of part D fit together nicely.





Finally, part B/C was stiched to D/A but again I made sure that the right side of the cotton was turned inside!

After that, I turned the fabric inside out, which means the smooth and beautiful side of the fabric is the outside of the mattrass cover now. I carefully removed the tape that held part B and C together.
By using some pins I stiched again about 2 mm away from the edges, all around.
I did this on both sides of the cover.




Next  I put the foam mattrass into the cotton cover,  using the gap between part C and D.

 Last step;  the buttoning......



And this is the final result!