Catching up

I've been doing a fair bit of dollshouse related activity, just not specifically on the Willowcrest. I went to the Kempton Park dollshouse fair and then I went on a Mulvany and Rogers Masterclass.  This weekend I went to the Arnhem dollhouse fair where I did get some knitting items, knitted sweaters (bargain!!), some spools of thread, and a kit to make a sewing machine - all for theWillowcrest. You can read about the visit on my main blog here and if you scroll down the posts a bit then you will see the Georgian room box I built on my masterclass.

'Quilted' jacket

Today I made a 'quilted' jacket to hang on a wire mannequin form that I bought some years ago for this purpose. Quilting shops usually have quilted garments on display so I knew that I wanted one for my shop.

This is one of those cheap white-painted-wire constructions, but I like the base and the mannequin pivots on the central stem.

I spray painted it silver by wedging a pen into the neck as a temporary holder.

I have a collection of fabrics that look like miniature quilts, which I put together a few years ago knowing I would need lots of 'quilts' for this shop.  I chose one with miniature Lone Stars to use a feature on the back panel of the jacket, and one that looks like small piecing.  The pattern is from 'Making and Dressing Dollshouse dolls' by Sue Atkinson, and is a boxier version of the Ladies' basic bodice pattern plus I reduced the fullness on the sleeves.  I assembled the back panel by gluing the small pieced fabric around the Lone Star.

I added some patch pockets cut from a third 'quilty' fabric. The hems are glued, but the shoulder and side seams are stitched on the machine using a short stitch length.

Of course, now that I've loaded the pictures onto the computer, now I see that the jacket had slipped to one side on the mannequin before I took the photo.  Grrrr.

And here's a picture looking in the front door of the shop - excuse the flash, I took this in the evening and there wasn't sufficient natural light.