The Windsor Chair

Apologies for not having posted for a while.  I flew to Arizona to visit my mother for a week and came down with a cold. 🤧 Although it was a mild cold, I still had it the weekend of the Good Sam Show, which I really felt that I shouldn't attend under the circumstances.  😢  I spent most of the weekend just resting.  Last week, I was in training all week, learning Java coding for one of the applications I support.  Between recovering from my cold and straining my brain on all that coding, I was pretty exhausted every night, which meant that I really had no energy to work on the library.  This past weekend, though, I finally got to make something.  Yay!

The library has a Windsor chair.

I had originally intended to purchase one here:  https://www.mastersminiatures.com/54-windsor-armchair-121-p.asp, but I feel like I've kind of been on a roll making my own pieces and thought I'd at least like to try to make one myself.

My biggest concern was how to get dowels small enough.  The smallest I could find online were 1/16" in diameter, and those were just way too thick for half scale.  I thought I would have to buy a lathe, and was blanching at the price, but, on a model ship building Web site, I found out that the best way to make super-skinny dowels was with a jeweler's draw plate, which I promptly ordered.  Basically, what you do is take your 1/16" dowel and keep pulling it through successfully smaller holes on the draw plate.  As you do that, the dowel gets shaved down more and more until it's the size you need.  I found that I had to pull the dowel through each hole several times, and it helped to pull from end for a while, then switch to pulling from the other end.  Here you can see how I was able to really shave down my dowel!  The one on the left is what I started with; the one on the right is what I ended up with. The process is actually kind of fun and Zen, but you do get little wood shavings everywhere.  😊

I cut the arms, back and seat from bass wood, and used my little pin vise to drill the holes I needed.  I had to go fairly thick on the chair back, as I needed to be able to drill holes in the edge of the wood.  The dowels did not take stain well, so I ended up using my India ink pens to try to color them to look like my mahogany stain.

On my first try, the dowels looked too skinny to me (although looking at the original chair, they were probably fine).

So I tried again, going a little thicker with my dowels.  I also made even thicker dowels for the legs and did a little carving on the ends, using the same techniques I used on the barley-stick table legs.  It was fiddly as all heck trying to get all the dowels inserted into their correct holes and relatively straight.  That was definitely the hardest part of making it and accounted for the most use of "magic" words.  The outer back dowels must go all the way through the arm rests, and, as you can see on try one, I had difficulty getting the arm rests even.

Here is the little chair I ended up with, next to a match box. I am actually pretty happy with it, although I know it's not an exact match for the one Theodore Roosevelt had.  Below is a picture of it in the room.

The Second Side Table

Next up was the side table that goes next to the flowered chair.  I call it the badger side table, because there is a stuffed badger right next to it.  The badger commemorates Josiah, a pet badger owned by the Roosevelts until he had to be given away due to a bad habit of biting people (!).  Yes, I do have a plan for making him, but it’s going to require learning a new skill, so we’ll see.  😊

Not much exciting in the making of the table itself.  As usual, I sized it to fit existing strip wood, although the top has some of the nice maple veneer I got from Carrie.  This table has a drawer and a shelf, so I got to use the “Chippendale” drawer pull I made in my demo. 

What was a much more interesting exercise (and took a lot longer) was what goes on the table.  

For one thing, there is a lovely blue glass pitcher.   While I can find blue glass pitchers in 1:12 scale, I’ve had no luck in 1:24.  ☹  I did find a clear glass pitcher that was a good shape and thought of using Gallery Glass to color it.  However, I think it would be difficult to cover a convex shape like that evenly.  (I actually tried Gallery Glass on the green lamp shade, and it was definitely not a success.)  I’d hate to waste the money and have it not work out.   I decided to make my own “ceramic” pitcher from quilled paper.   The process for quilled paper pottery is explained in detail here.  Although the whole process can take several days, it is one of my favorite things to do.

Here is my pitcher before the final sanding.  Its “belly” is made from two quilled paper bowls, one inverted on top of the other, while its neck and lip are simply card stock.  Its handle is made from floral wire.  I drilled a hole in the bottom of the upper bowl before inverting it, to ensure I would be able to insert flowers.

What I love about quilled paper pottery is that, as you fill in with gesso and sand down, you retain very slight ridges that make it look as though it was turned on a pottery wheel.  I then gave it multiple coats of cerulean blue, mixed with a dab of turquoise and some paint extender.  The extender makes the paint go on very thinly without brush marks, but it does take several coats to cover, with quite a bit of drying time in between.  It is finished with some gloss varnish and is filled with paper flowers, made with the tiny flowers from my edge punches.

The little book shelf is made from a strip of ¼’ wide wood.  The ends were cut from some wood paper with the help of my Silhouette cutting machine.  Each end is actually two pieces, stuck together back to back.  I couldn’t get the tiny holes cut out, so I simply colored on some dark blue with an India ink pen.  The metal embellishments come from a cut up bead cap.  I added a few small blue books and was happy with the result.

The table topper was definitely the hardest part.  It looks as though it has some green in it, but I had a cream fabric with a small tone-on-tone print, so I initially used that.  I cut a strip of ¼” wide fabric, its edges sealed with Fray Check.  Then I used an overcast stitch along one edge to gather it.  I cut a square of paper just slightly larger than my table top, covered it in the fabric, and then tried to glue my fabric along the underside.  While this sort of worked, I clearly did not cut my square large enough. By the time I’d glued on my ruffle, it would no longer fit over the top of my table.

 For my second try, I glued the ruffle to the outside edge of a square of cardstock cut to fit the table top.  I then glued a square of paper, covered in fabric, to the top.  I had to round the corners because they otherwise extended too far out over the ruffle.  This one fits, but I’m not happy with how it looks.

I finally decided that the fabric I was using was just too thick and stiff to work properly.  I checked my tie collection for some fabric that might work—nothing.  I also checked my two favorite miniature fabric vendors—Miniature Luxuries and Dragonfly International.  Again, nothing.  So, I selected a green damask image that I liked, tiled it, sized it, and printed it on some silk from Dragonfly.  I tried method one again, cutting the original square just a bit larger.  I also used my Pretty Pleater to pre-ruffle the fabric, so that it would hang more realistically (sort of).  I’m not super happy with the results, but I can live with it for now.

There is a lamp that goes on the table as well.  I have a lamp that I was going to use, but now, of course, I’m thinking of making my own to replace it.  My light bulbs finally shipped, so I’m hoping they arrive soon, and I can start playing with them.

The Universe Hands Me a Gift - the Lamp and the Green Chair, Revisited

I love the way the universe works sometimes.  Last week, I was trying to figure out what I could use to make the shade for the side table lamp.  I had a couple of ideas, but I wasn’t convinced they’d be the right size.  That night, I went home, and in the mail was an envelope from a company that sells promo pens and other tchotchkes.  In the envelope, besides a sample pen, there was this:

I have no idea what it is.  Some kind of blister pack?  Packing material?  Whatever it is, it has little dimples or half spheres (the ones on top of the hexagons) the exact right shape and size for the lamp shade!  And what’s more, there are several of them, which gave me a chance to experiment, because we all know I am never happy with my first try.  😊

I carefully cut out one of the dimples, punched a hole in the top with my leather punch, and glued on a snippet from one of the plastic tubes that comes around the bristles of my fingernail brushes. 

Then I painted it with glossy green Testor’s paint (with a smidgen of black thrown in).  For the base, I painted a bead with a mix of green, yellow, black and white.  (Yes, this is actually the second try on the lamp shade, as the first one had some issues.)

I added a bead cap and a little spacer, as well as a bit of metal tubing, for the neck of the lamp.  To hold the shade in place, I like to use clear vinyl furniture disks.  They come in a standard ¾” diameter, which was a little large for this shade, so I cut it down.  It cuts fairly easily with scissors.  My cuts are not the cleanest, but they really don’t have to be for this purpose. 

I punched a hole in its center, once again using my leather punch.  (I love that tool.)  Naturally, I am out of grain of rice bulbs, so have some on order.  This is the lamp assembly, sans bulb.  The wires will go down through the center, and the bulb will sit on top of the vinyl disk.

The shade then fits over the disk (it's not glued in place yet, as I'm waiting for the bulb), and there we have it.

Last Monday, the fabric for my chair arrived, and I dived into dying it.  Because it is 100% polyester, I had to use Rit DyeMore.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t come in as many colors as original Rit, and there aren’t as many color formulas.  The frustrating thing about looking at colors online is that they aren’t always true to life.  They can also vary greatly from monitor to monitor.  I was shocked when I was looking at pictures of my trial chairs on my monitor at home to see how blue the middle chair looked!  In real life, the suede paper is not a bluish green at all; it is a soft gray green.  (If it showed up as blue green on your monitor, you must have thought I was smoking something when I said it was close to the original chair!)  I’m not entirely sure what the true color of the original chair actually is, and trying to match it to a possible dye combination shade is even trickier.  I finally decided on Apple Green, and picked up bottles of Peacock Green and Sandstone from my local Joann’s.  With DyeMore, you must use the stovetop method of dyeing, which means stirring the fabric in a simmering pot for 30 minutes.  While that was something of a pain, I have to say, the dye took well.  Clean up was a snap.  You’re supposed to wash the fabric with an old towel after dying so that any dye that comes off in the wash will get deposited on the towel.  Apparently, no dye came off at all.  Of course, what I ended up with was nothing like what I saw on my monitor.  I thought my first try (on the right) was a little too intense and lime green, so I tried again, backing off the amount of dye slightly and reducing the Sandstone color a bit relative to the Peacock Green.  I really thought the color on the left was the best, until I started cutting it up into little bits to upholster the chair.  Then, the color on the left looked way too soft and minty, and I preferred my original Apple Green, which is what I ultimately used.

To make the suede buttons and the backing for the chair, I decided to print some of the green color on my white suede paper.  Fortunately, I tested on plain paper first because (you guessed it) the Apple Green color block from the Rit Dye site, when printed out, didn’t match my fabric at all.  I had to play with the color until I got something that I thought was a close enough match to the fabric, then printed a block onto my suede paper.  Whew!

When gluing upholstery fabric to anything that will be curved, I’ve found that it’s best to have the piece in its curved state while gluing.  If I glue the fabric to a flat piece and then try to curve it, I end up with a bunch of excess fabric in the middle.  I put a little glue stick on my foam, stuck the fabric to it, then curved the whole thing around a lip balm stick, holding it in place with a rubber band.  Then I clipped my fabric and glued it down.  I do not clip too close to the edge.  The fabric has to fit over the foam before being glued down on the back.

Usually, tacky glue works great for gluing upholstery.  However, with this fabric, I had to use Fabric Tack.  It just wasn’t staying well with regular glue.

With the seat and the back upholstered and stitches made for the tufting, I glued them in place and added tiny punched dots of the suede, rounded on my craft foam, as buttons. (See here for the process, except I didn’t have to glue anything to paper.) I also used the suede paper on the back.  It lies nice and flat, and I don’t have to worry about fraying on the edges.  The original chair had some kind of white trim.  I used white DMC perle cotton embroidery floss for this.

And here, finally, is the completed chair. 

The Side Table

While waiting for the fabric for the green chair to arrive, I got started on the side table next to the leather chair.

This is the original:

My pattern included strip wood and carved toothpicks, as well as floral wire and seed beads.

The most important part of the table, to me, was its barley twist legs (also known as rope twist).  I previewed my first effort at those in my last post.  Here it is again.

Yes, I’m aware the twist is going the opposite direction.  As it turns out, it was much easier for me to twist it this direction, since I’m right handed. 

I found two tutorials online:  https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/make-carved-miniature-rope-mouldings-2366807 and https://petitpunt.blogspot.com/2009/08/making-rope-twisted-legs.html.  The second one was enormously helpful, even though the author was clearly working with a larger scale.  (If I had made my initial cuts 2 mm deep, I would have cut right through the toothpick!)  I particularly liked the jig for holding the wood while cutting.  To make my own, I just glued two cut-off bamboo skewers side by side on a piece of scrap wood.  It worked perfectly! The tools I ended up using were the jig, my utility knife, a triangular file and a round file from my set of mini files, a fine grit sanding twig, and, of course, a ruler and pencil.

I cut off the ends of my fancy toothpicks, because they were a bit longer and a bit more consistent than my regular round toothpicks.  Round toothpicks often aren’t really round.  Even in the picture below, you can see that there is some flatness to parts of the sides.  I drew vertical lines 180 degrees apart down the sides, then marked horizontal lines all the way around the toothpick at 2 mm intervals.

I then drew my diagonal lines across each “box” formed by the two sets of lines.

I made my first set of cuts around the toothpick with my utility knife, following my diagonals down.  There are actually two sets of winding cuts—one starting in the top “box” of the left-hand side of the toothpick, one starting in the top “box” on the right-hand side.

I then widened the cuts with one edge of my triangular file.

I widened them further with my round file.

Finally, I softened the edges of my cuts with my sanding twig.

The whole process took about 45 minutes per toothpick.  The fussiest part was marking the lines.  After that, it was kind of fun.

Before assembling my table, I cut, stained, and varnished my legs, shelf and tabletop assembly.  The tabletop assembly was also glued before varnishing. The top of the table has been veneered with some of the maple I got from Carrie, as it takes the stain better than basswood and has a lovely smooth surface when varnished.

I then drilled tiny holes in the end of each piece of barley twist leg, as well as in the bottom four corners of the tabletop base and through the four corners of the shelf.  I glued small pieces of fine wire in the ends of each leg.  I used this wire to strengthen the connections between the component parts.  The bottoms of the legs are made with metal seed beads (in matte copper) and toothpick tips. The wire runs down through the shelf and the seed beads. The “wood” decoration is made from floral wire and more of the metal beads.  Of course, I was so intent on construction, I forgot to take pictures of the process, but here it is completed.

I’ve added some over-sized books and a lovely laser cut doily from Stewart Dollhouse Creations.

Is it just me, or does the base of the real-life lamp look exactly like it was made from a bead and a bead cap? 😃 This is where I intended to put the lamp whose shade I broke, but now I’m thinking I should just make my own.  Either way, I have to come up with some way of making a shade like that.  I wish they made ping pong balls that were half an inch in diameter.

The room box so far.  It’s slowly taking shape.

The Saga of the Green Chair

I’ve started work on the green chair.  Here are a couple of pictures of the original.

For my pattern in Word, I had to use a bunch of different shapes and combine them in an effort to create something that was pretty close to the shape of the real-life chair.

I grouped the various shapes, copied them into Microsoft Paint, erased the lines I didn’t need, then copied them back into Word.  As you can see, I originally had the bottom of the back as a straight line.  Fortunately, I made up the chair using mat board first.  It quickly became apparent that the back was too “stiff” looking.  Finally, it dawned on me that in order to get the chair back at a nice angle, I had to curve the bottom of the back pattern, too.  After a bit more experimenting, I got a fit I liked.  Here you can see my mat board chair, the patterns, and the wood pieces I cut.  I don’t have a laser cutter, so everything is done by hand using a utility knife.  To get the nice curve on the back, I soaked the wood in boiling water, then wrapped it around a small glue stick, secured it with rubber bands, and left it to dry overnight.

Here is the finished frame of the chair.  Keep in mind that the seat will be higher once the cushion is on.  I didn’t bother staining most of it, since it will be covered with upholstery.  I am definitely happier with the way the back looks.

Then I tried upholstering cushions for it.  Ugh!  Since the chair is upholstered in velvet, I had ordered a bunch of velvet swatches from Mood.  The swatch I tried was closest in color, although really too yellow to be a good match.  I thought it was a fairly low nap velvet, but in half scale it definitely looks . . . hairy.  I guess I forgot that I’ve used velvet to simulate fur in half scale.  Next I tried some velvet paper.  It has a nice texture.  The color still isn’t quite right, but I think it’s a bit closer.  Here I ran into two problems:  I couldn’t make the indentations for the tufting using thread—there wasn’t enough give in the paper.  I tried using my burnishing tool to make the indentations.  It worked, kind of, but not well.  The other problem was that the paper was too thick and too stiff to wrap nicely around the foam cushion.  For my third try, I used some Alova suede; I’d picked up a remnant at Joann’s, and thought it was worth a try, even though the color is way too dark.  I honestly think this fabric works the best.  (It looks better in real life than in extreme close-up).  It wraps and tufts nicely, and the nap isn’t too long. 

I looked online for other color choices, but they only have a neon lime green and very yellowish sage green.  They do, however, have a plain white.  I have ordered a yard of the white, and I’m going to try my hand at dyeing it.  We’ll see how it goes.

In other news, I completed a little rug to go under the leather chair.  This is actually a 1:48 scale rug pattern.  I worked it in continental/tent stitch on 40-count linen.  This made up much, much faster than cross-stitch, because it’s basically half the stitches.

I also tried working on the barley twist/rope twist for the legs of the side table.  Here is an example, before and after staining.  I’m pretty pleased with the result.  Will talk more about the process in my next post.

And, finally, on a completely different note, Carrie was kind of enough to send me some left-over wood veneer that she had. (Some of it is being used on the side table.)  As an extra little surprise, she threw in an etched metal sheet of 1:24 scale silverware and utensils.  I've already made up the little corkscrew/bottle opener, and here it is on the bar from my Merrimack.  Thanks, Carrie!

The Side Bookcase

Back to furniture making!  I decided to start with something simple and selected the smaller bookcase that goes along the left-hand wall.  When enlarging and lightening one of the pictures of the bookcase, I realized that it has a drawer along the bottom.  (Maybe two; it’s hard to tell because the chair is in the way.  Because our home has a lovely built-in with a long drawer along the bottom, I decided to make one long drawer on the bookcase.)

I started with my drawing in Word.  Planning in this way really helps me play with proportions and gives me something to cut out and place in the space, so that I can see how it’s going to work.  I also adjust my plans to fit standard strip wood dimensions.  There’s only so much wood cutting I can do. 😊  For this bookshelf, I used mostly 1/16” thick bass strip wood, with the exception of the shelves and the drawer front; they are all 1/32” thick.  The shelves are 1/2” deep.  The drawer front is cut from 3/8” wide strip wood.

Once my pieces were cut and stained, I put together the inside of the drawer first.  I like to use a face plate on my drawers, as I think it gives them a cleaner look, but I needed the inside put together to make sure I accommodated it when gluing together the bookcase.  I don’t bother staining the wood on the inside of the drawer; I just glue it together in my little gluing jig.  Here are some pictures of the finished drawer, so that you can see what I’m talking about.

Once I had the inside of the drawer glued together, I could start gluing my main shelves and shelf-divider.  Because I had that drawer at the bottom, I couldn’t use my trick of extending the vertical line on my pattern and laying the back of the bookcase on top, to ensure proper placement of the divider.  Fortunately, the bookcase takes beadboard at the back, so I could just line my divider up along one of the “boards.”  You can see I used my Lego blocks to make sure that the pieces were glued in at right angles.

Once the sides were glued on, I glued the face plate onto my drawer, and trimmed it out with HO scale lumber.  I trimmed the bottom of the bookcase with quarter round.  Then I used the spacers from the first bookcase I built to glue in my shelves.

If any of you have followed the thread on Greenleaf forums about half-scale hardware, you’ll know that it’s extremely difficult to find.  I make my own “Chippendale” drawer pulls.  I start with a piece of cardboard and lay out repositionable (not permanent!) double-stick tape.  I cut small diamonds from heavy card stock.  The color doesn’t matter, since I paint them.  It just happens that the heaviest card stock I have is colored gold.  I tried to find a nice shape I could make with a punch, but nothing quite worked for me.  If you have a punch that you like, you could use that, too.  You could also cut ovals, or, if you are going for more of a craftsman look, rectangles.  I place my diamonds on the tape, and lay another strip of cardstock just below them, to give the bottom of the pulls something to rest on while I’m gluing, so that they’ll hang straight.

Then I remove links from a fine chain and use super glue to glue them to my cardstock diamonds.

Once the glue is dry, I remove the extra strip of cardstock.  Finally, I paint the whole thing (chain link and diamond) with Testor’s enamel paint.  Sometimes I use gold.  This time, I mixed a little flat black in with the gold to give it a more antique look.  When the paint is dry and I’ve finished varnishing my drawer, I can simply lift the drawer pull assembly off the removable tape and glue it to my drawer front with a little tacky glue.

While waiting for my paint to dry, I added the cornice and a final piece of strip wood to the top of my bookcase.  I gave the whole thing three coats of satin varnish, using 0000 steel wool to smooth it in between coats and after the final coat.

And here it is in place.  I may reframe that painting.  The frame I made isn’t really heavy enough.

The figurine (which in the original is the Japanese god of benevolence and hunting) is one of a group of tiny bonsai mudmen I scored off eBay a while ago.  The buffalo is a little large, but that’s all I’ve been able to find so far, and the small Asian blue-and-white vase, is, of course, a bead from Michael’s.