Simply Curious

Yes, that IS another old wooden rocker in the background. Brian's grandfather made it.

 I'd just like to say that this is a frustrating, painful, awkward process best suited to someone much more anal retentive and OCD than I.  The chair frame will never be even, which means your weaving will never come out neatly in the middle, and if you mess up early on, you won't know until it's far too late to fix it.  The weaving slows down quite a bit at the end as you try to feed yards of damp rolled up paper through a progressively smaller hole while the rush kinks and twists up on you horribly.  It will probably take me three or four more chairs before I get competent at this.  I saw some cute fabric woven chair seats on Pinterest, so it's quite likely that I will NOT use fiber rush as my next seat medium if I ever bring home an orphaned seatless chair again.

Pinterest, my inspiration for pretty much everything, these days, showed me these projects one day.



The kittens, they got to me.  I loved it, but it seemed like an awful lot of cuteness and work for something that would soon rot.  I couldn't bear to watch the kittens rot!  The AllYou pumpkin looked fake, somehow, so I decided to use fake pumpkins for this project. The problem was I couldn't find any fake mini pumpkins that looked right.

Then I remembered my mother had made pumpkins out of fabric.  She showed me her pattern when I was visiting, but it was so simple I figured I didn't really NEED one, and someone was bound to have posted fabric pumpkin tutorials online.  Oh yes, I found lots.  There seemed to be two basic patterns, one just a rectangle, the other a set of at least 6 curved strips of fabric that was wider in the center than at the ends.

Sew News has a great pumpkin tutorial for the rectangle.

Quill Cottage has a great pumpkin tutorial for the sectioned pieces.

I went with the rectangular pattern because: I'm lazy, I wasn't sure what size pumpkin would work for this project, and after studying the instructions, it seemed like I would be doing the same thing to the pumpkin no matter what pattern I used.

I found a cheap foam pumpkin at Walmart that seemed to be the right size, and begged some leftover Halloween colored fabrics from my mother.  I didn't want them to be TOO Halloween flavored because I was afraid that would detract from the kitten shape.

Finished kitten hogging the limelight.

underside of a kitten.  Making the 'divisions' in the pumpkin left a deep hole on both sides!

Then I sat and made up a bunch of pumpkin kittens.  I used a 5"x10" rectangle, and that size produced a pretty good kitten head that would fit in the pumpkin.  For the eyes, I used black felt (buttons would have worked, too.)  I made the stems by cutting narrow strips and rolling them up tight and gluing in place. I used heavy duty button thread for the whiskers.  I figured out where I wanted to place the nose, then sewed on the whiskers so that the knot would be hidden by the nose when I glued it on.



I also used polyfill stuffing for the interior.  One of the sites suggested using plastic bags, which I thought was a great idea, but I had a really hard time getting my needle through the plastic.

. . . feed us.

You can see the plastic bags I stuffed into the pumpkin to fill up the space.  I was thinking that hay would be cute to hide that, but then I thought it would be too much like Easter grass and it would get EVERYWHERE.  Now I'm thinking a square of burlap would work, and I might try that.

My problem is I don't like the pumpkin.  It's not big enough for ALL the kittens, and obviously I can't eliminate two of them! I need it to be wider, not taller, and I haven't seen any fake pumpkins like that.  It's also obviously foam and I've got little foam balls clinging everywhere.  Maybe a cauldron?  I'm afraid the darker kittens will disappear in that.  Maybe a basket with Halloween fabric/ribbon?  I'll have to experiment.  And take pictures.

UPDATE 10/19/2014

I tried a few more settings to see what would happen.

I am never going to get a good photo of this tree.

Here it is, for the moment, anyway!

I already owned most of the furniture.  The tea cart is the only major addition.  I made the sofa several years ago for my Knupp dollhouse, but it'll be years before I get that refinished and redecorated, so I'm putting it to use here. I'd like to swap it out for something smaller. The birdcage was a kit from many, many years ago, and I don't remember who made it. Eventually I'll add wallpaper and redo the wall hangings so they make sense.

I've been feeling overwhelmed by all the projects I have lined up, so I've kind of been ignoring them.  Not a good way to get anything done!

I've done a ridiculous amount of shopping for my tea room, and I'm planning to make even more food for it.  I want to experiment with chalks and powders for fine detail and texture work, especially on breads.  We'll see what happens.

The Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls, and Toys had their 2014 Fall Show in a different location, but it was jam-packed with excited miniaturists, so I don't think moving hurt them at all.  I spent quite a bit, nearly all items for the tea room, regretted some of it, and got annoyed at the number of vendors who did not include their contact information on their receipts.


I thought it would be great to change out the decor in the tea room for each holiday, so kept an eye out for appropriate decorations.