More Cleaning...

Some of these, I am just cleaning up.  I am not decorating for Christmas.

This quarter scale does not really qualify for Christmas decorations.  After all, it is in the desert and no pine trees around.

 I guess that I could put a Christmas tree in this one, but again, it is not really right for Christmas dressing.

So.  Cleaning is what it gets.

 The houses that I have that are candidates for exterior dressing get some snow and a few pine trees... nothing fancy.

I need to fix the snow on this one... Not very well done yet.

This one always gets snow.  This is the first time I have bothered to put greenery out. I may have to go and find a few of my battery operated Christmas mini lights.

I am going to have to look for those tomorrow.  Wish me luck in finding them... The last time I looked, they were in the electrical drawer... But I may have taken them out to get ready for Christmas... If I did, I have no idea where I put them.

I did finish the shawl today.

I still have a couple of pieces of furniture to make for Amare's room box.  One week and two days until Christmas... Oops. I guess I should get to work!

See you tomorrow.

In the Mood...

This morning, I was over at Witch Joan's. I took my camera because I wanted to take photos of her She Shed... I forgot! Rats!

Joan was playing with quarter inch boxes... It put me in the mood to do quarter inch.  I haven't done any for quite a while.

I still have two small houses and five room boxes.

I keep thinking of the three story mansion that I did about 25 years ago.  I did it with cigar boxes and a rug tube tower.  It was really fun to do, but at the time I didn't have a place to put it. So I traded it for a transformer... That I have never used.  I should have kept the house.

I did this series of quarter inch rooms in trunks a few years ago.  The top one started it all.  I did an attic in a trunk... Instead of a trunk in the attic. Silly but fun.

Then I went on to do a bedroom and a bathroom.

I also did a tea shop in a small box from Harrods in London. Then I kind of lost interest in quarter inch scale for a while.

This is the attic in the trunk that started the whole thing.

There is a trunk in the attic in the trunk...

The wicker chair and table in the bedroom is made just like my 1" scale wicker. Sewing thread and very fine wire.

After I got home from Joan's I went and looked at the two boxes that I have most of the quarter inch supplies stored in...

I am going to have to go through and straiten them out. The top one is furniture and accessories and the bottom one is all kinds of doors, windows and such.

Some of the stuff is in the wrong box. 

The more that I look at it, the more I want to do another mansion.  In quarter inch scale a mansion is not all that big...

Tessie bounced in while I was looking at the supplies...

She said, "You know that's me in the bedroom box, don't you?".

I am not in the mood to go round and round with her again.  So I just nodded my head in agreement and kept looking at the supplies and dreaming up ways to use them..

The wicker chair and table in the bedroom is made just like my 1" scale wicker. Sewing thread and very fine wire.

Back to dreaming.

See you tomorrow.

Tessie's in Hiding Again!

I told Tessie that if she didn't let me have the day off, before her makeover, I was going to turn her into a decrepit old lady with gray hair... She is somewhere in the house... I am not going to go look for her.  She doesn't want gray hair.  "No how.  No way." Those were her exact words.

So.  That gave me some time to mess around without interference. A whole day to myself!

See the pretty book with the black and white cover?  That is now Tessie's appointment book.

She can only have things done on the days that I put her in the book for. At least that is what I told her.

Actually it's a book full of quarter inch graph paper... Just don't tell her that.

I just wanted to see what a new freebee would do.

See the gray beige liner in the book?  I found it at the big Walmart here in town.  It is actually an eight and one half by eleven paint sample with a sticky back.  They are free to take home and try on your wall.  They are "repositionable".  It seems to stick pretty good for something that is supposed to be removable... I see possibilities for mini walls...

When I opened the old book, I remembered how irritating the gift wrap that I used for the inside of that one was.  Not a lot of fun to work with. 

Now all I have to see is how this one holds up.

I found this pattern for a quarter scale chair and couch in the other book. 

I might just have to run that through the blog with directions later.  I don't know how many are interested in 1/4" scale furniture. 

These are very easy and if you want to learn, just give a comment.  I don't think that the directions are any place else on the blog...

Back to ignoring Tessie.

See you tomorrow.

Digging Out and Decisions...

I did a lot of digging out in the garden this morning.  Now I am just sitting here thinking about what to do next.

Digging out is still on the top of my list.

This house has been hanging on the bedroom wall for a lot of years now.  I am not even sure how many.

Every once in a while, I get a bug to work on it.  That lasts for a few days and then I start ignoring it once more.

Most of the rooms are small and won't hold a lot of 1/4" furniture.

Mini Tessie shows up every once in a while, but like her larger counterpart, she changes her mind daily about where she wants to live.

Yes.  The baby elephant is hers and she takes him everywhere... That can get kind of messy.  Maybe that's why she doesn't commit to one house...

Doctor Who parked his police call box in what was to be the dining room, Christmas before last...

It hasn't moved an inch.  Even in quarter scale inches...

I am seriously thinking of getting rid of this one and moving on to a different house all together in quarter scale.

All this one does is collect dust...

See? Dust everywhere!  About 25  years ago, I built a mansion from six cigar boxes and a rug tube. 
Maybe I should go back to that way of thinking and do another one of those. It was a much more dimensional house and had deeper, more realistic rooms.

Maybe even a quarter inch cigar box castle.  I am having to think on this.  But while I am thinking, I am going to go see if there is something else that I could hang on that wall that wouldn't make me feel guilty...

Yup.  I think that I just solved my own problem.

I am going to go look for something to hang on that wall now. 

See you tomorrow.

Rug Rats Are Us

I worked on the Russian Rug for a while this morning.

Then I went outside to do some gardening.  That was more fun.  The sun is shining and the leaves are sprouting everywhere.

When I came back in, I started cleaning up some more minis.

This time it was some of the quarter inch boxes.  I realized that I have never shown you the ones that I worked out that are stitched, but not on unseen canvas and with minute stitches.

This first one is the old attic in the trunk scene.  It was the first one of the series that I did.  The rugs were simply printed on muslin and turned under.

Then I came up with the bright idea of doing straight stitches on #22 hardanger cloth. 

And it worked!

This was the first one.  It is mainly straight stitches and some half cross stitches in different directions.  I didn't have a pattern.  I just flew by the seat of my pants.  Not bad for straight stitches on colored fabric.

Next I did one for the bedroom box.  Actually I did the rug for another room, but I liked it in the bedroom.  So it stayed.

It was a bit more complicated.  Center medallion, outer medallion, corner motifs and a border.



I simply started in the center with an elongated cross.  Then I worked out from there. 

I simply kept the outer center the same amount of stitches from the center motif all the way around.  That took a bit of head scratching, but it worked.

I free handed one corner then flipped and rotated it to the other three corners.  The last was the outer border.  I just made sure that it touched the center of each side.  Then I worked out a pattern that would fit.

Now you know the easy way to make a quarter inch rug, without doing a million stitches to finish it. 

Have fun.

See you tomorrow.

Too Many Years....

I'm still trying to clean minis.  A little bit at a time...

I went for my favorite quarter inch house this morning. 

The plan for this was in one of the old, small Nutshell News magazines.  Long, long ago...

I think that I may still have the plans somewhere around here. If I find them I will let you know what issue.  No guarantees though.

I never have been as fond of half scale as I am of one inch and quarter scale. So when I found the half inch plans, I scaled them down by half. 

At the time, I was doing a lot of quarter inch with my friends.

The dark wicker chair on the front patio is made just like my larger pieces only with 28 gage wire and sewing thread, instead of crochet cotton.

I made the logs across the top so that they could be slipped out for cleaning... Little did I know that I would, from time to time, ignore the fact that it needed cleaning, and leave it sitting on the shelf for months at a time...

Walter walked in while I was taking photos just a little bit ago and said..."Why don't I remember that?" 

Maybe it's because I leave it on it's shelf and never clean it.

Anyway, I pulled the logs back and did a lot with a paintbrush.

As I took the photos, I noticed that I missed the wrought Iron bars on the windows.  I have to go back and do those, before I put it back on the shelf.

The chest in the corner is one that I made when I was doing shows.  I did a lot of them with different tops.  They sold like hotcakes.  They could be used as a chest in 1/4" or as a jewelry box in 1" scale.

I will now stop pounding on the keyboard and go find a paintbrush.  I have windows to wash...

See you tomorrow.

I Am So Excited!!!

When you hear why, you may just shake your head and walk away from the computer. As I was cleaning minis this morning, I decided, for old time's sake, to put the mini TV back in the Burgular's Room. It works! Kind of......

Since the powers that be changed all of the TVs to work only on cable or satellite, I have not had any kind of reception on this little gem....

Granted, this is not the great picture that the TV once had, but it has one....On three of the Mexican TV stations that broadcast in Tucson.


I have always had a lot of fun with this box. When I displayed it at the TMS show for the first time, there were crowds around it...No...Not for the room box. I noticed that they were all men. It turned out that there was a football game on that day! That's what happens when a woman forces her husband to go to a miniature show when he would rather be home watching football....

The other reason that it is one of my favorites is the burglar himself. I have had many people ask me if this is Walter's night job. The man that I sculpted looks a lot like my husband. I didn't do it on purpose. I wouldn't want to blow his cover!

Just below that one, sitting on top of the Southwestern room box is this little Adobe house.

I can't say that it is completely original. I saw plans for either a 1/2" scale or 1" scale house, that resembled this one, in Nutshell News. Yup. Years ago. Nutshell News has had another name for quite a few years. I made it, with a few changes, in 1/4".

It sits on a wooden slab that is 8" by 10" with the corners cut in a semi circle. I think that they were meant for decoupage.

The house is 5 1/2" wide and 4 3/4" deep. It is 2 1/2" high.

The reason that I sat a wicker chair on the front path is to give you some idea of it's size. It is 7/8" tall. From side to side, the arms are 3/4". The seat itself is 3/8" square. The seat is to scale. Real chairs are usually about 18" from the floor to seat. This one is 3/8" exactly.

This one was made with #32 gage wire, 1/32" plywood for the seat and antique sewing thread for the weaving. It doesn't take quite as long as a 1" scale chair would, but it still takes lots of time. You have to allow for all the times you manage to drop it because it is so small....


Here's the view down through the top. To the left is the living room. You have to imagine that the sofa folds out for sleeping...To the right is the
kitchen-dining area.

The Vegas across the top slip out of their holes so that I can get into it to clean and re arrange....That's the next job on the list.

Back to cleaning and cooking....I just finished the apple pie. Now I have to go make a Chili Cheese Quiche and iced tea.

Only two more weeks of me asking you to get out and vote. The good news is, we are now ahead!!! I hope the trend keeps up.

See you tomorrow.

Back to Reality....The New Year....

Last night, I worked on finishing some of the basket starts that I have in my work box. I got a couple completed and managed to start a couple more....No. I know that's not how I'm supposed to do it, but that's how I do it.

I am loving the gourd baskets. I think that they have a lot of possibilities for experimentation.

As I told some of the commenters last night, I cut shingles for the front roof of the house until I was blue in the face and then started putting them on...It took a couple of hours and between the cutting and the shingling....I only got a row and two thirds finished.

I did cut the back wall for the observatory this morning and found some windows that will work well for that. Now all I need is a tiny telescope....I also put some of the rugs that I made in place and some experimental furniture here and there.

So you see. I am doing minis, but this is the start of the new year. As usual, I have big plans for rearranging and cleaning out. Don't we all?

It seems like this is when the mood always strikes me anyway.

This morning I started moving and cleaning in the kitchen. I was tired of looking at the radio case on the counter, under the cupboards.

It's not exactly a dead space, but it is hard to reach, so we don't have anything there that is useful. I dragged down the "Rusty Needle" from the top of the bookshelf and put it in where the radio formerly stood.

At least now I will have something fun to look at when I do dishes. I went to work on the window sill above the sink. It is right next to the counter with the quilt shop. I was taking the plants out and cleaning the sill under them.

Noise....I heard noise coming from the quilt shop. Here we go again. Heretofore, Tessie has shown no interest in the shop. It was high up and not easily reachable without zapping, so she left it alone.

Guess who now thinks that she owns a quilt shop? Yup. She is in there cutting up little squares, preparing to sew them back together....All the while, humming a happy tune and sipping coffee.

Zar invited himself along and had the nerve to help himself to my favorite cup. How do I know? It has my name on it in big bold letters! I want my cup back!

Oh well. It is keeping them out of my hair whilst I clean. I will just have to sanitize the cup after he finishes. My cup! No Zar germs allowed!

Back to work.

See you tomorrow.

A Happy Boring New Year,,,,,

OK. You are going to think that you are seeing triple...But you're not.

Yesterday, I was relaxing and watching boring TV. As is usual when Walter is watching sports, I am in the bedroom watching anything else that I can find.

On the wall, to the right of me, was this....

It was crying out for attention. Poor little wall shelf house...

I grabbed some paints and brushes and started listening and it started talking. Loudly....

It was all white and brown. First I started painting the rooms different colors. Then I had to go back and touch up the brown...Then I had to go back and touch up the colors in the rooms....Back and forth I went.

After that, I finished shingling the right side of the peaked roof.

Then I started laying flooring in some of the rooms. I still have five floor spaces to go. Considering that three of them are the entrance to the place, and will probably be cobblestone of some sort, I am not doing too bad.

The slanted left roof had to be covered, so I cut a piece of illustration board to fit and glued it on. That will be covered with shingles, but I was shingled out for the day. That will come later today or tomorrow....Sometime soon.....Promise.

Since the outside of the house is basically half timber Tudor style, I decided that the person that owned it was an alchemist kind of guy with an interest in the stars and other sciences.

The top peaked roof would have to be an observatory. Thus the stars....I have been saving that wallpaper sample since the 80s. I knew it would come in handy someday....I imagine that the entryway on the right bottom leads into a courtyard, thus the view of the dark above that section. No stars. Too low. Just darkness.

The rooms in the tower section will be a series of four shops. I am not sure what kind yet.The row of rooms at the bottom will be The wine cellar, which I have already worked on, and the scullery, kitchen, a pantry for storage and maybe a laundry or some other essential room.

The living area will be in the five larger rooms above.

The fun has just begun. Please don't disturb the six year old's attention span. I want it to last for at least as long as the house is talking to me.

See you tomorrow.

One Teeny Tiny Little Problem....

For once, Tessie isn't really the problem.... Well, maybe a little bit. She made me look at the new wicker book. She insisted that the half inch house needed some wicker porch furniture.

Then she went and hunted up some seat bases that I had already drawn and even cut some of them out... A long time ago...

While I am telling the story, I will throw in a few instructions...The seats for my one inch furniture is made from 3/32 cherry or walnut stock. When I go down to smaller sizes I use model airplane plywood. No warping and much sturdier than 1/16" solid wood.

When I get down to half inch scale, the seats are only 1"by 1" square, with two rounded corners. The love seat and the chase bases are 1" by 2". The equivalent of 2' by 2' and 2' by 4' in real life.


When I get down to this scale, the wires become much thinner. I can no longer use cloth covered wire and keep it in scale, so I go down to 26 gage brass or green floral wire.

Therein lies the problem. I cut those bases and never finished the pieces, not because of a loss of interest, but because I no longer had a drill bit small enough for said wire. I broke the two that I had.

It looks like I am going to have to hit some of the train stores in the area and see if they have drill bits that fine and if not, I am going to be forced to try the inter net...In a case like this, I usually like to see what I am getting to make sure that they are the right size. This should be fun...

The second photo shows Tessie with one of her sized chairs. The one in front of that is a half inch scale and the one in her hand is quarter inch. She keeps petting that one and saying, "It's so cute." Then petting it some more. She is going to wear it out.

I took these two pieces out of a gift bag setting to try them on the porch. The size will be perfect, if I can only find a drill bit.

I know that there is one out there somewhere...

I use #20 thread for the one inch wicker. #40 or 50 is my thread of choice for these half inchers.

If you are crazy enough to try the quarter inch size, those are 1/2" square on the seat and I use sewing thread to weave them.

Now that you know my problem, I am going to go and pout until Monday, when I may get a chance to go find a drill bit....Such a smalllllll problem.....

Meanwhile, I am still shingling away and bricking comes next.

See you tomorrow.

"But It's Not My Townhouse!!!"

Tessie is a bit testy this morning. I went in and looked at the bedroom wall. Then I decided that it would be nice to have at least one of the quarter inch wall houses finished.

I had just finished wallpapering and flooring three more of the rooms and part of the attic when she caught me.

She immediately started berating me with, "How could you? This is not my townhouse! I can't even get my big toe in this place."

She calmed down a little when I told her that I was looking for something that would be portable to take to Wednesday Witches. Her townhouse doesn't fit into that category.

She found her "Mini Me" and started carrying on a conversation with her small self. "I guess it is for me in a way. After all you are me."

I tuned out after that. I knew that it was going to get complicated.

Yesterday, when I was digging out the workroom, I did find a couple of things that would go in this house.

Just look at this computer! It was a charm from somewhere and is just right for the quarter inch house. It will have to be painted, but other than that, it is ready to go.

I think that the project of the afternoon is going to be windows. Since this type of house doesn't really have windows, I use Grandtline plastic windows, that are made for model railroad buildings.

I simply go to my supply of magazine photos of gardens and outdoors and lay the window frame over the photo. I draw around the outside of the window. That way I have an edge to stick to the back of the window frame.

I paint the frame, stick the photo to the back and glue the whole thing to the back interior wall of the house. When installed, it gives the house a bit of extra depth.

If you do this, try to remember that upper windows get upper parts of trees and/or sky and lower windows get the garden views.

It is a good idea to get a photo large enough to accommodate all of the windows, so that they all look out on a similar view.

Tessie is making a mad search for quarter inch furniture in the workroom now....She figures, the sooner I get this out of my system, the sooner I will go back to the townhouse.

So much for straightening the workroom....I can hear furniture flying all over the place.

I am going to the mini meeting and not going to worry about the workroom that was semi clean and now is a disaster area once again...

See you tomorrow.

Three Hours Later.......

That was three hours and almost 700 tiny shingles later....I finished the second side of the roof on the quarter inch cottage. It's hard to believe it, but there are almost 1400 shingles on this stinking little tiny roof! One at a time.... It definitely looks better than the paper one.

After that I was fed up with mini minis for the day.

I went and retrieved my new knook...No. Not an electronic reader. It is a way to knit with a crochet hook. I found out about it on the net and tried, at one point, to do it with an old wooden crochet hook. I had to drill a hole in the handle end and it didn't work too well, but it did suffice to teach myself how to use it.

This morning I found that Leisure Arts has put out a set of three of the needles and a beginner's kit. Walmart is carrying them. I couldn't resist.

I dug up some cotton, worsted weight yarn and went to work. This hook definitely works better than the one that I made myself.

I won't go through the steps, but basically, you make a chain of crochet as long as you want the piece to be and then pick up a loop from each stitch. You pull the stitches through with the hook and keep them all on until you finish the row. Then you pull the stitches off of the needle on to the cord. That acts as the second needle to hold the stitches. Then you turn it around and go back across with the needle again....etc,etc,etc.

I can see where it might be an advantage if you wanted to knit something big on an airplane or some such. I am going to stick with it for a bit and see if it gets any better...There is no way that I can see, that you could make socks....So it won't be my weapon of choice. Maybe a few scarves.

You are probably asking yourself where Tessie was while I was messing around with stuff that wasn't hers....
This is where. She and Zar have been preoccupied with my new book. I got it from Amazon yesterday. I might get to look at it after a few days. They are pouring over it with a fine toothed comb. Zar, for the machines and inventions. Tessie is more interested in the clothes, jewelry and accessories.

I do believe that there is a spark in Zar's eye that I haven't seen since his Clockwork Cottage was relegated to the top of the bookshelf. Tessie is even pointing out things that would look good in his place....Maybe there is still hope for him to have his home.....

Meanwhile, I am going back to knooking whilst they are both infatuated with the book. Maybe I will take a break and look at the other book that I ordered. Beadwork....Tempting....

See you tomorrow.

"The Quarter Inch Stuff Is MINE!!!"

That was Tessie this morning. She was under the assumption that I was going to do stuff for her today....

It started out bad. I grabbed these little wall hung boxes that I bought at the Dollar Tree last week. I thought that they would make handy little trays for mini carrying if I fixed them up a bit. The one that is behind Tessie is the first type I bought. It has a silly black line drawing in the bottom. I guess that kids were supposed to color them and hang them on the wall.

They are really well built. Mitered corners and brass hangers on the back. I saved those for something else....Maybe hanging a quarter scale cigar box house or something similar.

Anyway, I put a coat of stain on the one that Tessie is standing in. I lined the bottom with a piece of scrapbook paper and put some brass corners on it. They were left over from an old Chinese box that I had....It fell apart, but the fittings didn't.

The two that you see behind her, I bought a few days later. They are just plain boxes and will be easier to convert to another use.


After I finished that project, I sanded and stained the edge of the Victorian table that I am fixing in real life size. I a very pleased with it. I mixed stain that exactly matches the original wood on the table and color wise, you can't tell the difference. I will let it dry another 24 hours and then sand more and put the final finish on it.

Back to minis. I had an idea for a Tudor table for the quarter scale wall house. Four fancy toothpicks, a piece of 1/32"double bead molding, some 1/16 by 1/32" strip wood and a small piece of 1/32" thick bass wood and I had a table.

This is when the trouble started. I put together the base of the table. I set it down to dry and Tessie plopped down on the edge of the box. She took one look at the table base and announced, "Ha! I knew that the Quarter Inch Collection was mine!. You promised to work on my stuff today. Thus, this is MINE!".

I measured the legs(toothpicks) to 5/8" and cut them. The end pieces were 1/2" and the side pieces were 1 1/4". I glued them together and let them dry. Meanwhile I cut a piece of 1/32" stock to 3/4" by 1 1/2". Three by six feet seems like a good size for this kind of table.

I glued the top to the base, let it dry and stained it with Minwax Early American stain.

After it is thoroughly dry, I will spray it with Deft Satin spray.

Tessie is delighted with her new acquisitions. She keeps gushing about how little and cute the table is. I am not going to tell her that it is just on loan until she loses interest...Which she will, shortly.

If my attention span is that of a six year old, hers is approximately that of a two year old.

Back to furniture making. See you tomorrow.