The doll’s house carpet measures six inches by eight. The chairs are three and a half inches high.
One of my customers from Belgium, called Chris, has just sent me this picture of the doll’s house carpet and six matching chairs which she bought from me as kits a few months ago, and that she has recently completed. The design is called ‘Barbara’. The carpet is stitched in needlepoint with Appleton’s crewel wool on 18 count canvas, and the chairs are stitched on 32 count silk gauze with one strand of Anchor cotton thread. I think Chris has done a beautiful job with these.
Kits for these designs can be found on my website here, and tutorials on how to do the stitches and finish each type of kit can be found here.
I have recently returned from a Sufi Ruhaniat summer school in Germany, which was amazing – very uplifting.
As I had to travel from England, I was a bit limited in what I could take, so I had to leave my meditation stool behind. Fortunately, when I got there, there were a lot of meditation cushions of all shapes and styles available for the use of the students, and this one really caught my eye.
Om cushion with beautiful satin stitch embroidery
It’s worked almost completely in satin stitch of a really high quality, with a little back stitch. The colours are incredibly vibrant. The cushion is about 12 inches diameter, and about 8 inches deep.
Detail of the stitching
The motif in the centre is the ‘Om’ symbol. In Hinduism, it represents the unmanifest, the essence of the entire universe.
Several times a year, I bring out new designs for miniature needlepoint kits. Usually, the main batch is in the Spring, and then a smaller batch comes out in August. That means that the designs for the Christmas season have to be designed during the Summer (well, they don’t HAVE to be – but when it’s actually pre-Christmas and I’m *feeling* Christmassy, I haven’t got time to do any designing…). So, that means that when it’s the Summer, I’m designing for the Winter, which isn’t always easy. I can try putting on a CD of Christmas music, and I’d love to have a few mince pies to munch on, but really I just have to think myself into the Christmas mood without any ‘props’.
This year, though, it’s been easier than usual, as I’ve had an idea in mind for a new type of kit for a while now. The kits aren’t ready to go on sale yet (that should be in a couple of weeks), but I can’t wait till then to reveal one of the designs, which is now stitched and ready for the kit pack photography to be done.
‘Snowy village’ Christmas tree mat for a doll’s house
Da-dah!! It’s a Christmas tree mat in one twelfth scale (one inch to the foot). It measures just five inches across. It’s stitched in tent stitch and basketweave stitch using one strand of Anchor thread on 32 count silk gauze – that’s 1024 stitches per square inch.
This picture shows the tree mat ‘in use’, as it were – the tree itself is only five inches high
I’ve got two more Christmas tree mat designs almost finished, so by the end of August they should be all be available as kits from my website www.janetgranger.co.uk
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