A weird chair

A friend of mine posted a photo on Facebook from a local museum. Another friend commented that they had had a chair exactly like that when they were a child.

 

The opportunity was too good to miss. I said I would replicate it in miniature.

It was supposed to be a quick and inexpensive project so I didn't bother to build the chair myself and bought something that was close enough.

 

I posted this on my friend's timeline saying that I accepted the challenge. Yet another friend commented that the point of the chair was the missing part. Well, yes, exactly.

I have most of my tools temporarily in storage, so I didn't even have a little saw. I did it with a scalpel which took some time, but I wasn't in a hurry. A lot of sanding too.

 

Then I stained it with dark oak stain.

 

Then I rubbed it with a candle here and there. Painted with green and wiped off immediately. Paint does not stick to wax which produces the right effect.

It was fun to make. Not sure what I will do with it, other than post the picture on my friend's FB.

Miniature wheelchair

Some time ago I saw a picture of a miniature antique wheelchair on the web. For some reason or other, I got fascinated by the idea and saved it in my project bank for the future.

For a wheelchair you need wheels, and I consulted my miniature groups, with variable success. Of course, you can buy anything from model shops, but that's not what I typically want, so I put the idea on a back burner.

Then I happened to pass by one of my favourite craft shops, Tiger. I always go in to see whether they have something interesting, and this is what I found:

Frankly, I don't quite understand the "build-your-own" aspect because all you need to do is add pedals, and I cannot at all see why you need four wheels, but since the only thing I wanted was wheels, I got four for the price of two. And a tiny screwdriver as a bonus.

I took the bike apart (this is when I again wondered about "build-your-own") and painted the spokes.

As we all know, acrylic paint doesn't work on plastic so I had to paint with enamel. I wanted the spokes brown, to resemble wood, but I didn't have brown enamel and wasn't confident to mix my own.

Enamel paint takes ages to dry. Meanwhile I made the chair itself. I used a kit from the House of miniatures.

 

I could have made a chair from scratch, but the challenge was the wheels, and I have far too many chair kits anyway. I will not show how I made the chair because it was straightforward. I used a piece of leather for the seat because I am not good at cushions.

What was less straightforward was attaching the wheels. My initial thought was simply to fix the wheels on a toothpick and glue to the brace, but of course the wheels would not turn, and it felt like cheating.

 

Back to the group again, and I hope my miniature friend doesn't mind me quoting the instruction in full.

"Take wire thick enough to fit through the wheel centre hole. Now, measure a piece that passes underneath the seat of the chair. On either side, bend the wire at a 90 degree angle towards the ground. Then, at the correct height to match the centre of the wheels, bend it outwards on both sides to lie horizontal. Place each wheel onto the two ends of the wire to check the height. This is where you decide how high off the ground the chair will rest. Then, if you can find a tiny washer or flat disc that fits onto the wire, thread that against the chair. Add the wheels. Now add another disc or washer against the wheel. Make sure the wheels can spin easily. Take cutters and gently cut off the wire close to the washers, leaving about 3mm. Glue a small bead on to the tip of the wire - not the washers and not the wheels - as they must still move. For balance, the best would be to add two chair legs in the front, so that the chair doesn't tip over. Then the nurse can tilt the chair back a bit, and push it forward easily. Unless you can find a miniature wheel for the back, to prevent it from tipping over".

Guess whether I was intimidated! This was by far the most sophisticated miniature I had ever made.

To begin with, the only wire I have is champagne wire. It was the right thickness, but of course it isn't straight and cannot ever be fully straightened. But it is easy to work with. I didn't have washers, but I made tiny spacers from card. So it was easier than it sounded, until I realised that I had no idea how to attach the axis to the chair. Back to the group and the same guru: 

"You will have to mark the position of the wire on the chair base. Then glue wood strips on either side of that, but leave enough space for the wire to fit in the middle channel. Once the strips are glued down, you can glue the wire into the channel, probably with E6000 or some similar strong glue. If you want it to look pretty, you can cover it with another strip of wood or toothpick, or even just paint it to hide the glue".

I don't know what E6000 is, but I used my usual strong glue, and it all worked fine. In my excitement, I forgot to take pictures. But I followed the instructions, glued strips, then glued the wire and glued a piece of coffee stirrer on top. When I painted the whole assembly you almost couldn't see it. I used a tube from a cotton bud to cover the worst uneven parts of the wire, and it looked even more impressive. 

Ideally, I wanted raising foot rest, but it felt a bit of an overkill. (Next time maybe). I don't know whether the foot rest raises on the miniature I first saw on the web. As I was rummaging through my supplies, I decided that sticks from Magnum ice cream would be most appropriate.

 

I didn't attach them yet, because first I needed to figure out how to make the back wheel. Again, I didn't have to, but having got that far I at least wanted to give it a try. I had the fork from the plastic bike, but it looked too coarse on the delicate chair. I didn't have small wheels with spokes either and didn't know where to get them, so if I ever find one I will replace, but what I had was a little wooden wheel the origin of which I don't remember so it had to do. And it took me several evenings to figure out how to attach it so that it could turn. 

 

I know it's protruding too far back, and I will make it better at some point (when I also have a better wheel), but at least it serves its purpose. 

I don't remember what the handle used to be, just some bit I had in my supplies. As usual: don't throw anything away, it may come handy. 

 

I am very pleased with this project. It isn't perfect, but it is one of the most challenging pieces I have made, and it is not unlike what I envisioned. I have no idea where it goes in my various environments.  Maybe I can put it by the stairs in the great hall, waiting for the poor invalid to come down. And I now need a nurse to push it. 

The joy of making

It is strange how miniature making goes in cycles. I started by making as much as possible myself. (Now, ten years later, I know that everything is possible, with right materials and tools, and a lot of practice). Then at some point I got hooked on kits, and I have now made over fifty pieces. In between, I had periods when I again was obsessed by making, recycling and upcycling. And of course making the Adam table from scratch gave me confidence. So after complaining about how bad I am with chairs, I decided to make a chair. A slat back chair.

I once used turned chopsticks to make a Tudor stool, and I had some of these chopsticks left. So they were my point of departure.

I am really, really bad at cutting even pieces so I was extra careful. (Of course you can always sand if the legs are not quite right).

I made slats from coffee stirrers (what else?). The picture shows three stages: a cut piece, square pegs and rounded pegs. I also sanded the top of the slat to make a slight curve. 

Then I drilled holes with a pin vise. Now, if someone told me ten years ago that I would be drilling holes in chopsticks I would laugh. And here I am. Doing it absolutely voluntarily, in my precious spare time. And my, did it take time! But the best thing about making miniatures is that you have all the time in the world.

For spreaders, I used toothpicks. As you see, I didn't quite manage to get the holes right, but I will pretend it's intentional, to emphasise that it is handmade and one of a kind.

This was the tricky part, just as with the kits. The spreaders kept coming off. Patience and more patience.

But it did look like a chair when I finished gluing. A bit wobbly, but not bad for the first attempt.

I wanted to try some interesting finish on this miniature so to begin with I painted it brown.

 

Then I painted it over with two coats of light blue paint which I had over from an earlier project. I let the paint dry well between coats and after the second coat. Then I sanded it with fine-grained sandpaper to produce a worn effect.

I made a paper template for the seat and cut out the seat from embroidery canvas. It didn't matter that it was not even because I still needed to trim it before gluing.

Finished! You almost cannot see that some spreaders are crooked, and if you can, it is, as I have already suggested, part of the charm.

Compare the two chairs.

Lessons learned: Firstly, I really can make anything. ANYTHING. What a boost for self-esteem! And what I cannot make yet, I can learn. Secondly, this project was a hasty one. I just wanted the test in principle where it was doable. Now that I know it is, next time I will be more careful, make sure that all holes are right, that the slats fit in better, and so on. Practice makes the master. Keep coming back, and you will see me making progress.

Chair disasters

Of all miniature furniture, chairs are my least favourite. I am simply not good at chairs. I bought several sets of chairs for my early project because I didn't believe I would ever be able to make them myself. I did change the fabric.

That said, I made a very clumsy kitchen chair within the first month after I started miniature-making, when I had neither proper tools nor skills. I used lolly sticks, toothpicks and chopsticks.

Like many of my earliest pieces, this one has sentimental value, so I have kept it, and it is now in my van Hoogstraten room box.

Of course I made champagne chairs at one point. 

I was quite pleased with my cabriole leg chairs, and perhaps because they somehow turned out well I thought it would always go well. Hubris. From there, it went downward all the way. The lyre-back chairs were a pain and didn't look nice. I have problems with tucking in and gluing fabric, it just never looks neat. I showed two more chairs in a recent post that I am totally unhappy with. I will work further on them soon.

Meanwhile, I wanted to make a slightly unusual chair, a slat back chair.

 

My miniature friends had warned me that it was tricky, and it isn't that I hadn't listened, but it felt it was time to tackle this kit.

 

It looked very straightforward. I used antique pine stain, and when it was dry, I enlarged the holes just a tiny bit with a pin vise and sanded the square pegs of the slats to make them round. Yes, you got it right, square pegs in round holes. Precision work.

 

The frame was relatively easy to assemble, although there were three different spreaders, with half a millimetre difference, I am still not sure I did it correctly. The layout sheet wasn't too helpful when the scale is so small. The spreaders did come off all the time, but it was just a matter of letting the glue set a little on one side before inserting the other, so I must admit that some bad language went through my mind if not my mouth.

The supplied cord was very white and new, so I dyed it with tea. My miniature group supported me whole-heartedly. I left the frame to dry overnight, anticipating tons of problems the next day.

But not THAT many problems.

To begin with, the cord was very, very long, and you cannot work with such a long thread as it will get tangled all the time. I cut a manageable length and started threading it according to instructions, praising myself for my patience. When I ran out of cord, I tied a neat knot on the bottom side that wouldn't be visible. Several times I had to go back, taking off the needle, upon which the cord kept untwining. But I persisted.

 

Yet deep inside I knew it was too good to be true. And it was.

My whole attention was on the cord, and I didn't notice when a spreader came off. I was almost finished, although I saw that something wasn't quite right with the pattern. I had very carefully sewn one of the spreaders inside the seat. As I tried to glue it back, several other spreaders came off.

 

Now what? It took me a couple of hours to get that far. I could try to mend the frame without ripping the seat - in the picture you see that I caught it with another thread. Or I could rip up the seat, re-glue the frame and start all over again. Usually, when things go epically wrong with a project, I put it aside for a while. I did something else that day and looked again the day after. I am sorry to admit that I gave up. The frame was pretty, and I knew that I would hate this chair unless I could think of another, easier way to finish it. I cut up the failed seat ruthlessly and threw it away, which is very unlike me. Luckily, I remembered that I has a piece of embroidery canvas that I had bought many years ago in a hobby shop and never used. I tested with a paper template and then made the seat, tucking flaps beneath. 

 

Isn't it lovely? I wish I had more of this kit. 

More Chippendale furniture

This past weekend I also made some more Chippendale miniatures. I have already shown a lyre back chair, and I have now made four of these.

Just as I predicted, the moment I put these into the room, the old ones felt wrong. So they are now moved to storage for another project, some time in the future. Or perhaps for sale or swap. Likewise, the old side table is out, and the new Hepplewhite side table has replaced it. It is incredible what a difference it makes.

I have further made a shelf.

 

It is very elegant, and it will be filled with books, but I have no idea how to hang it. I want to have it on the inside of fronts, mostly because I am running out of space for furniture. I will try to mount it with velcro, like I did with curtains.

Last but not least, I made a lowboy. I didn't know what a lowboy was before I started making these kits, so once again, this hobby is highly educational.

The up-done chests from Poundland in the background now feel completely wrong so I am looking forward to making more Chippendale pieces. Come back soon.

This and that

I have been working hard all day, but have very little to show. That's because I have been doing small trimmings that an untrained eye wouldn't even notice. For instance, this:

I don't know about other people, but my floors never fit perfectly, because they are handmade, and handmade things aren't perfect. Some defects can be hidden behind mouldings; here, for instance, a gap is covered by skirting boards. But around the threshold it still needs to be trimmed, and I have now done it with several doors. Please say that this looks better:

 

I know it does. Bit it takes quite a lot of time, cutting, fitting, staining, gluing, sanding, varnishing. Just a tiny strip of wood. There are zillions of such tiny details all over the house, and I have now spent hours dealing with them. Also adding more mouldings where necessary, and filling and then painting tiny gaps, and painting moulding edges that I had forgotten to paint before I attached them. Boring things and really nothing to show.

As a reward, I have started making some Chippendale miniatures from my most recent bargain.  They are great fun to make, and if you haven't seen my previous pieces, I have collected them in two posts, here and here. 

I started with a bench because I had never made a bench, and it was relatively easy apart from endless sanding. I wasn't sure what kind of fabric to use because I don't know yet which room the bench will be in, but I can change it later.

Right now the bench is in the music room, and the fabric is the same as the curtain. I am going to replace all chairs in this room, and I can use the same fabric.

Then I made a side table, which was also straightforward. It goes well with the dinner table. But of course I have two problems now. There is no space for it in the dining room. And the old side table suddenly feels crude. So it is possible that the old side table will have to go. I am not particularly attached to it. I bought it cheap at Maple Street. There is nothing wrong with it, and it would look good in another room, but a Hepplewhite dining table demands a Hepplewhite side table.

 

I guess this happens in 1:1 scale too - once you've started buying period furniture everything else feels wrong.

Finally, I have started making chairs. I now have kits for seven pairs of chairs, almost all of different models. I am going to have new chairs in the dining room, to go with the table. Chairs are a challenge to make because it is precision job more than any other.

Most of my old chairs have sides cut from a single piece of plywood. In any case, they aren't as elegant as Chippendale chairs, which you can clearly see if you put them beside:

 

The chair on the left is from the very first pair I bought on ebay three weeks into my miniature hobby. I replaced the original fabric. I don't remember where the chair on the right comes from, but until today I liked it. Interestingly, the Chippendale chair is slightly smaller. 

I have two more of the same lyre-back chairs so there will be four of these around the table and two or four of a different model. The dining room will look great with a proper set of chairs. Come back soon.

 

Rocking chair remake

Now that I have replaced the old book case with the new one that is just half as deep, I have some space in the rear corridor. I want as many details as possible in rear corridors because it creates a sense of more space than there actually is and adds to the mystery. What else is hiding there?

There isn't a lot of space though, and it must be something compatible with a book case (I already have a painting on the wall that is only visible through the side window). A rocking chair? Would the master sit down in a rocking chair occasionally, while browsing through books?

I have had a rocking chair for a long time, don't remember where it came from; one of those Made in China pieces that are of quite good quality, but poorly finished, too glossy, too edgy. Most miniaturists are familiar with them.

 

I have improved several such pieces, although I have never tried to remove varnish with strong chemicals as dollhouse books suggest. I tried soaking it in white spirit, but it didn't work. I sanded as much as I could and then painted it with ordinary acrylic paint. Because of the paint undernearth it got sort of a distressed look without me doing anything about it. I tried to distress it further, but there was no point. Instead, I sanded all edges to make them more round and smooth. I coated it with oak stain. I know you are not supposed to use stain on top of paint, but I do and find it works well. I finished with a velvet seat.

I cannot say I am fully satisfied, and I probably wouldn't put this piece in a front room, but in a rear corridor where it is barely visible I think it will be fine.

Here it is in its right place. I added a bottle of wine and a glass for the master. The two giant books on the floor, that obviously don't fit into the book case, are a fascimile of the original Sherlock Holmes story from Queen Mary's dollhouse and a Latvian-English dictionary that I have transformed into a book of magic. 

Champagne chair

A very happy new year to you!

One of my Facebook groups has asked me to show how to make a chair from champagne wire. This is the right season! So here is a very simple tutorial. All you need is a pair of pliers. The person who taught me said she could do it with bare hands, but I cannot.

First, you need to release the "legs" from the wire. Then you can shape the "back" as you want it.

 Fix the back onto the legs. Here I think pliers are necessary.

Here is your chair. You may want to add a seat cushion. You can also remove the metal seat altogether and make a cushion from card or something else.

And finally, you can add something to the back, for instance, pieces of junk jewellery.

 It took me fifteen minutes to make. Enjoy!