The world of Willowcrests

Wow.  After Elaine left such a helpful comment on my post about 'What's in a name' where I was musing on what to name my quilting/knitting emporium, I went to have a look at her blog.

Elaine has put together a fantastic post here about all the great Willowcrests she has found online.  It's fascinating to see all of the ingenious treatments people have given to the same basic kit, and I think I could waste a lot of time surfing around the other Willowcrest sites.

Only now I am feeling a bit sad because my Willowcrest is locked up in a self storage unit a few miles away and I don't know when I am going to see it again.

But have a look at Elaine's blog, you're sure to get some great ideas!

What's in a name?

As part of the house packing process, I've been cleaning out my desk and I found the slip of paper where I was jotting down possible business names for my Willowcrest quilting and knitting shop.  The name was waiting for the construction process to finish, and will go up on the front of the house and on a folding board in the garden.

I was wondering: 'where can I put this list of names so that I can find it again when we eventually unpack?' and realised the best place to put it was on this blog!

So here are the possibilities so far:

• Willowcrest Quilts and Knits
• Quilter's General Store
• Willowcrest Quilts and Yarn
• Quilter's Junction
• Quilter's Corner
• Quilter's Cottage
• The Quilter's Mercantile
• Quilter's Rest
• Quilter's Crossing
• The Quilted Sheep

None of them particularly original, I know.  I think my favourites at the moment are 'The Quilted Sheep' and 'Willowcrest Quilts and Knits' although the latter seems a bit dull.

What do you think?

Going into storage

We are packing up our real house ready to put it on the market, so all of the dollshouses are going into self-storage at Easter including the Willowcrest.  It's all packed up and ready.

Here is an excerpt from my main blog explaining how I packed my dollshouses:

"I'm packing the dollshouse stuff the same way I did last time we moved.  I tend to stick things into my houses anyway, either permanently, or temporarily using tacky wax, so there aren't many loose things.  Life is too short to take everything out and wrap it individually.  So what I do is wad up tissue paper and carefully place it into each room, filling the nooks and crannies until the entire room is held lightly in place with tissue paper.  If there is something heavier that lacks support, for example a doll, then I will wrap it individually and place it back into the room. For big rooms, once I've covered everything with tissue paper, I might fill in interior voids with crumpled newspaper or bubble wrap.  Once all the voids are filled, I either seal the opening with cling film in the case of a room box or 1:48 house, or in the case of a bigger house, wrap it in bubble wrap then lightly hold that on by wrapping parcel tape around the bubble wrap.  So that nothing can shift or fall out as it is a sealed environment.  Eventually, when I unpack, I will unpack on a low table placed in the centre of a bedsheet on the carpet, and I will carefully open out each piece of packing material to check that nothing small is embedded in it.  Last time very few things came loose, and I was able to spot them in the packing material.  Worst case scenario, they fall onto the bedsheet where they can easily be spotted."

The Willowcrest is too big to go into a box, so I've just bubblewrapped the heck out of it and we will carry it carefully.  It will probably have to lie on its back in the car, which is going to test the packing arrangements, but I know it's all safely sealed up so even if something does come loose, it shouldn't fall out or get lost.

This blog was already in hibernation, but it will stay that way now for a year or so until we are in our new home.  Hopefully I will have a dollshouse display area and a place to work on my minis.

Purchases at the Tom Bishop Madrid show

I went to the Tom Bishop miniatures show in Madrid last weekend for the first time, as part of a fast but fun city break for the weekend.  I enjoyed the show and picked up a few things for the Willowcrest.

The two waste bins and the basket are for the Willowcrest.  They're made of card, decorated with decals, paint and gloss varnish.

This log cabin stitched pillow will go on the sofa in the top floor workshop room.

These sewing supplies will either go onto one of the workshop tables or into the window display.











Otherwise, I'm afraid this house has been hibernating for a while, I haven't been doing much dollshousing for several months now.

1950s sewing machine

I've put together the sewing machine kit that I bought at the Arnhem dollshouse show from Sylvia's Lutjebeudel.  I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

They provided me with a sheet of English instructions when I bought the kit.  The kit has everything you need except tools and glue.  There is a plastic sewing machine body and base, two pieces of wood for the double sub-base, metallic decals, and a photocopied sheet of floral graphics. The instructions were straightforward and there was an accompanying sheet of diagrams which clarified measurements and assembly details.

After shaping and assembling the sub-base with tacky glue, and assembling the sewing machine with Zap-a-Gap, it was time to start painting. The instructions sensibly recommend that you paint different-coloured components separately and assemble them at the end. The blue paint is a stamping paint that I bought from the bargain bin at Hobbycraft a few years ago, the white acrylic is Americana 'White wash' and the silver paint is Games Workshop 'Chain Mail'.

After final assembly, the metallic decals and floral graphic are added, and then I gave it a couple of coats of gloss varnish and added some fine thread to give the illusion of a spool of thread on top.











For the moment, I've positioned it on the bottom shelf of a display unit that still needs filling up, in the quilt shop.

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.