Tiny dollhouse cushions – even tinier than usual!

One of my customers, called Rikke, recently sent me a lovely photo of the dollhouse cushions that she made in half scale (1/24th scale), and one in 1/12 scale for comparison. The larger cushion was made straight from the kit that she bought from my website.

She embroidered the larger cushion for her daughter’s dolls house, and the smaller ones for her own 1/24 scale house. Her daughter is six years old, and chose the ‘Flower ring pink’ cushion kit herself 🙂

The 1/12 scale cushion is stitched in needlepoint using the 22 count canvas supplied in the kit. The half scale cushions are stitched on 48 count silk gauze with one strand of the Anchor stranded thread leftover from the twelfth scale kit. Rikke added a few extra rows of stitching to make the sizes work as she wanted them to.

From the top left, the designs are Kate pink, Flower ring pink in 1/12 scale, Judith, Prudence cream, and Flower ring pink again but in 1/24th scale.

Aren’t they sweet when they’re so tiny?! Have a look at the cushions page on my website to see all the designs that are available – they are really quick and fun to make  🙂

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The Fine Miniatures Forum for dollhouse enthusiasts has just begun!

If you like dollhouses and all things miniature, there is a new online forum that you must see….the Fine Miniatures Forum.

It has been set up by the International Guild of Miniature Artisans, based in the USA (although anyone can join the forum and add posts). The Guild “was founded to promote fine miniatures as an art form; to increase awareness and appreciation of high-quality workmanship through public education; to recognize and honor qualified artisans and encourage work of highest quality; to encourage the development of new artisans; and to coordinate and serve the interests and needs of the artisan and non-artisan.”

The forum already has several topics about needlework in small scales, including needlepoint in the Berlin woolwork style, for instance. It’s a really interesting forum – go and have a look!

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Dollhouse tearooms featuring miniature needlepoint – eye candy for needlepointers!

One of my customers, called Margaret, has sent her latest batch of update photos of her ‘Chester Rows’ dollhouse shops mini building which she is furnishing beautifully, and are filled with beautiful stitching which she has done. Her interiors are always packed with detail! This is a sampling of the images which have been added recently to her page on the Customers’ Gallery on my website (scroll to about halfway down the page to see the latest pictures). The Customers’ Gallery features dozens of inspirational photos of dollhouse needlepoint in stunning settings, all sent in by my customers who have made up kits from my Online Shop. Margaret must be one of my most prolific customers  🙂

This is the gazebo on the rooftop of the Tea Room. Isn’t the grapevine wonderful? You can see the Diagonal Stripe clutch bag in the centre of the picture, and a Delicate Flowers handbag near the base of the pillar on the right.

Inside the gorgeous Tea Room, the tables and chairs are set out on a Josie (blue) Art Nouveau carpet, and there is another clutch bag in a basket in front of the counter – this time, it is a Bargello (pink) one.

 

I love mini food – seeing these rooms, it’s very tempting to start making a miniature tearoom of my own……

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Follow me on Pinterest if you like embroidery and miniatures!

I’ve recently started a Pinterest page for my embroidery kit business,  Janet Granger Dollhouse Needlepoint, but it’s already got much more on it than just stuff to do with my business! I love collecting images of stuff – it’s great for inspiration when I’m designing new embroideries, but it’s also very interesting to see what other people love to collect images of. If you haven’t been on Pinterest, then you don’t know what you’re missing – especially if you like dollhouses and embroidery! There are millions of images of gorgeous embroidery on there, that you can search for easily, and then pin to your own boards. Stumpwork, ribbon embroidery, 3D embroidered items like sewing sets, little houses, pincushions, jewellery….every time I look there, there’s something new to pin. This is my board for ‘Embroidery’. And this is my board for miniatures that I’m thinking of buying for the miniature toy shop that I’m building at the moment. Pinterest is good as a ‘visual wishlist’ like this – save things to your board as and when you see them as you’re surfing, for later. The link directly back to the website you originally saw the item on will ensure you can find the website again. Much better than saving links to your Favourites folders, because it’s visual. You can easily add a ‘Pin it’ button to your toolbar in your browser, to make saving images really easy. One of the more specialised boards that I’m collecting images for is images of the ‘Celtic Ladies’ in cross stitch by Marilyn Leavitt Imblum of Lavender and Lace. One day, I’m hoping to stitch all five designs in the series, so at the moment I’m collecting together all the different versions, alternative colourways, fabric choices, and so on, that I have seen around the internet, to help me make my own choices later. There are some really lovely adaptations of the original charts in this set of images. I’ve also got boards for subjects not connected with crafts at all – for instance, I’ve got one for images of women with long grey hair. That’s because I’m growing my hair at the moment, and eventually I want it to be really long, but it has to grow through that awful messy stage first! The images on this board keep me from reaching for the scissors and giving up, because if I could get my hair really long, I could do lovely hairstyles….

One way of using Pinterest, which will be very good for readers of this blog, is that I have inserted a Widget in the right hand sidebar (just above the ‘Categories’ section) which will take you directly to the Pinterest board which has a visual index of all the posts I have ever written here – almost 200 so far. So, if you tend to be a ‘visual person’, you can now go to Pinterest by clicking on the Pinterest image on the right, and just browse for an embroidery or dollhouse-themed post by looking through the images, instead of reading down the list in the right hand sidebar here. When you find an image that takes your fancy, click on the image to open it up full-size, then click on the ‘Visit site’ button at the top of that page, and it will bring you back to the relevant post on this blog. Simples!  🙂

Any images from this blog, or from my website, can be saved to Pinterest for you to save to your own boards, and to share with others who love the same things as you!

Don’t forget, too, that if you send me images of your stitching that you have done from any of my kits and charts, preferably displayed in a dollhouse,  I’ll be able to put them on Pinterest, as well as on my Facebook page, and the Customers’ Gallery page on my website.  Email them to janet@janetgranger.co.uk

My Pinterest page can be found here, so go and have a look, and if you like, ‘Follow me’ to see whatever I add to it.

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