Toy Food - let them eat cake

So what did I make for little boy's 4th birthday? I gave him the white & blue striped summer shirt seen in this post (he got the tartan one earlier) and I made him some more felt food. Both grandchildren love playing 'shops' and 'cafe' with the food I made previously (see these posts & post for some pics). Once again I used Umecraft's great patterns, slightly adapted so the food can be 'made'.

Here is the slice of Lemon Meringue Pie - made & in parts












The piece of Chocolate tart with cream & slice of Passionfruit Cheesecake share a base - I embroidered the passionfruit seeds :-)











those cats would like some cake...

And talking of cake - here is my granddaughter wearing the "Marie Antoinette" dress-up dress I made for her ...

Cute huh! and what about the other Blythes? Well I always take Lillian to Melbourne so she can catch up with BiBi - and we found that my daughter has created a lovely little woodland scene for the dolls to stroll about in.

Intergenerational Creativity

Have been in Melbourne for my grandson's 4th birthday ... 4yrs old - Gosh!

My gorgeous daughter made a great play-mat for her boy to play with his cars in an imaginative way. A piece of AstroTurf with some of the 'grass' plucked out to make a road. I helped with some road-making while I was there ... plucking plastic grass is very slow & tedious work! The houses are more of my daughter's creativity - yoghurt tubs with masking tape, paint ... and little boy made garages from some boxes - it must be genetic :-)

Daughter is far more artistic than I am - she gets that from darling Hubby's side (his mum is an artist). I love it that our daughter is painting & creating again; she needs to paint as I need to make things. When she was a little thing I used to sew and knit 'around her' when she would not settle to sleep without me - just as now, she paints 'around' her little one ...
To me, that is what a Yummy Mummy looks like.

Her current works are quite 'woodland', almost cute animals with a dark background - quite sweet but not kitsch. Like this critter - not quite of this earth ...

Lots of Little Stitches

I was busy boasting to a friend that I'd been sewing a rolled hem by hand - "Ahah" said he, "I'm making a wedding dress in silk chiffon, would you hem it for me." And so I am - a lovely soft dove grey colour and I might, eventually, get proficient & efficient at rolled / whiped hemming but right now it takes at least an hour to stitch 1 metre and when the fabric is not on the straight of grain it flutes and plays up. This shows some of the better bits I'm also mending / renovating a lovely old hand-knitted baby's shawl. Mending & reinforcing and then embroidering over the top of the mends so they no longer look like mends. Ladybirds & leaves in bullion stitch - where there is a ladybird on one side of the shawl there are leaves on the other side.

That photo is almost to scale as the beetles are only 1.5cm from toe to toe.

Paws Awhile

Sorry but I do love silly puns and I have been making paws.
They are for a mascot costume - a dog. Built around a pair of cotton gloves, padded and 2 fingers are stitched together for that cartoon animal look. I was having a lot of angst about making these paws as I've seen quite a few disasters with costume gloves and animal paws. But I made these about 3 dozen times in-my-head and when I finally plucked up the courage to sew them for real - they went really smoothly :-) I'm quite chuffed with them as I think they achieve that compromise between looking like a cartoon animal & being wearable.
Have also been knitting a hand covering - a fingerless glove. There are not many garments or styles that I dislike but I have issues with fingerless gloves - traumatised by too many episodes of "Steptoe & Son". However, I've been commissioned to knit a whole lot of things for a stage production and one item is a pair of these objects. SO - in an attempt to overcome my distaste and to get my head around how they are knitted and to show the designer what sort of yarn works best - I've knitted a sample ...
This was the prettiest free pattern I could find on Ravelry (if you are a Rav member here is a link ) I used "jitterbug" Colinette's sock yarn. The 'real' mitts for the stage production will not be so pretty - I think I'm going to be knitting in distressing; holes etc to make them look old & tatty. Urrrrgh way to Steptoe!

Been playing with my Doll's House again

Yeah I know - when will I grow up! Although I still haven't quite finished the bathroom I've moved my attention to the 'Entry' which is on the 'ground floor' or bottom shelf of the cabinet - this doll's house is a converted cabinet and it is all about the interiors. Because the 'entry' is on the bottom shelf and because it is really small, this room is quite dark and in it's previous incarnation it was way too dark. The floor was dark wood, the wallpaper black with a red print ... and I forgot to take photos of it in the Before state. Sorry!

It obviously needed a face-lift but I hadn't any ideas until I saw the wonderful mini tiles at the Turkish shop in Newtown, Ferah. They sell little tiles with magnet stuff on them - for fridge magnets BUT peel off the magnets and with lots of polyfilla as 'grout' - Tah Dah
The 2 smaller tiles at the centre front (with the urn & the monkey - I think it's a monkey?) I've had those for ages - I think they are Dutch. The new wall paper is a gift wrapping paper, turquoise to pick up on the tiles and the gold will shine when I get the lighting working. Then I got the skirting board and cornice timbers out, painted them to match, glued them in ... then it was time to address the ceiling.





The old ceiling rose - made from Fimo - was black & red, so it got a whole lot of paint and some gold beads (more twinkle!) I had to cut through the rose to get the wires of the new light fitting through ...



And here we are - ceiling and cornices glued in and still drying (hence the sewing pins to hold everything in place). I've popped some of the old furniture back but some of this has to be replaced as it is not the right scale ... even the flowers in the boy-with-urn statue are the wrong colour now! Oh well, the oz$ is doing well again the US 'green-back' so its a good time for some internet doll house furniture shopping :-)

Meanwhile - I've encountered a problem with the lights that I've bought. They are a 12volt system & now I need a 12volt battery ...

But I'm really happy with the Entry now - the Turkish tiles and the French looking wallpaper are fitting with my new ideas about the family that lives here. Current fantasy is that it's a house in Paris, about 190something, the gent of the house was a diplomat who traveled widely with his lovely wife before they returned to Paris to raise their family ... sounds nice huh!