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Looking for ideas for Sugarplum


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I have a Sugarplum kit that I was thinking of making into a little English cottage for a nice little Grandma. I wanted to have a nice little kitchen with an aga stove and a parlour with a fireplace and a cosy area for afternoon tea, maybe a loveseat, two chairs, and a place by the door for an umbrella stand etc. While looking over the pieces in the kit, I realized the dimensions are really too little for what I want to do. So, I want to try something else; a shop, small school or very small inn, maybe a guest house...I don't really know.

Can I get some ideas from others? My interests include teaching, quilting, flowers, reading, photography, traveling and staying in quaint hotels, but I am open to ideas outside of this scope.

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Your ideas sound perfectly good to me...You are going to be suspending reality, so decorate to what your whimsical ideas dictate.

Also, Google the house and look at images of other people's work. They will give you some ideas as to what is possible. (Nothing in a dollhouse is impossible). There is a blog by

Cinderella moments

She primarily uses small houses. Check it out too.

 

 

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You could make the Sugarplum into part of a little English cottage, like a cozy sitting room downstairs, and pretend that the kitchen bathroom are in the invisible part of the house. The bedroom can be upstairs. The stairs, of course, are also in the invisible "back" of the house. :D 

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Cheryl, you can achieve a lovely little cottage for your granny as you describe; you might want to invest in some mat board and work on making furnishings to fit.  You have those lovely bench seats on either side of the door that you could copy in mat board to make a cozy inglenook by the fireplace.  Foam core or mat board could also be used to make  dividing wall downstairs.  Your kitchen can have the Aga stove and the little table & chairs that come with the kit.  The bedside commode table could hole the chamber pot underneath and the dresser could hold a pitcher & basin & have a towel rack on its side.  I raw my "rag" rug shape on a piece of craft felt and use all six strands of a variegated embroidery floss to chainstitch a braided rug; if you crochet you could also make a cute rug using size 10 crochet cotton and a #10 steel hook.  Candlewicking thread makes acceptable scale "yarn" for crocheting afghans or knitting wee shawls.

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The Sugraplum is such a sweet house, and I Think you would be able to fit most of what you had in mind should you scale down the furniture to say 1:16 instead of the usual 1:12.

I have one in progress that is going to be a vet's clinic and I have actually added a divider wall on the bottom floor giving it two spaces instead of a full floor so to speak and I am using slightly smaller pieces of furniture as well as building them specifically for the intended space.

Looking forward to seeing your build take shape!

Hugs

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Thank you so much for all the wonderful ideas. I think what I am going to do is make the Sugarplum the residence of the headmistress of a private girls' school. I will only have a sitting room downstairs and bedroom upstairs as this lady takes most of her meals with the girls. I have my eye on the Magnolia Kit for my original English lady! Can anyone have too many dollhouses, projects, or dreams in the planning stage? We may deal in miniature but our imaginations are gargantuan. Thank you again to everyone who responded! I loved the ideas you gave me and have given me new ways to look at things!!

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21 hours ago, havanaholly said:

Cheryl, you can achieve a lovely little cottage for your granny as you describe; you might want to invest in some mat board and work on making furnishings to fit.  You have those lovely bench seats on either side of the door that you could copy in mat board to make a cozy inglenook by the fireplace.  Foam core or mat board could also be used to make  dividing wall downstairs.  Your kitchen can have the Aga stove and the little table & chairs that come with the kit.  The bedside commode table could hole the chamber pot underneath and the dresser could hold a pitcher & basin & have a towel rack on its side.  I raw my "rag" rug shape on a piece of craft felt and use all six strands of a variegated embroidery floss to chainstitch a braided rug; if you crochet you could also make a cute rug using size 10 crochet cotton and a #10 steel hook.  Candlewicking thread makes acceptable scale "yarn" for crocheting afghans or knitting wee shawls.

Thank you so much for the rug ideas. I have been trying to braid a rag rug using embroidery floss and the floss keeps getting turned around. I do know how to crochet so I am going to try that! I have a friend who will knit me some really cute blankets and such! I love infecting others with the miniature craze...

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On 3/30/2017, 6:13:20, Dollhouse Novice said:

I have been trying to braid a rag rug using embroidery floss and the floss keeps getting turned around.

I've made braided rugs with embroidery floss. I found I could control the floss better if I tied the beginning to something stable, so I could put a little bit of tension on the braid as I worked it.

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On 4/1/2017, 7:00:40, KathieB said:

I've made braided rugs with embroidery floss. I found I could control the floss better if I tied the beginning to something stable, so I could put a little bit of tension on the braid as I worked it.

I had tied my embroidery floss to a ring that I attached to a kitchen chair so I could sit on another chair and braid the floss, however, someone had told me that I needed to use 4 yards of floss and needless to say as it got longer I got more confused...

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I am really getting into the Headmistress idea. I have started writing down some ideas. Her name will by Rosalyn Weston-Smythe and she is the daughter of a Dean from an English University (Oxford or Cambridge?) and her father is the fourth son of a Duke. She is in a 30 or 40 something who allows some of her girls to visit on Sunday afternoons so her house will have a few visitors of different ages.There will be tea and food and tea cups everywhere as girls spread out to read books, write letters, chat by the fire, etc..

But first, I have an Orchid to finish, and a Harrison to do some work on...

 

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On 3/30/2017, 4:13:20, Dollhouse Novice said:

I do know how to crochet so I am going to try that!

So I know you've moved on from the granny cottage, but I'm just butting in to say that this is my all-time favorite rug to do in miniature: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/pretty-little-rug   Since I do it in half scale, I generally use a truncated version of the pattern, but I'll bet it would make a nice 1:12 rug done as is.  I use 2 strands of embroidery floss and a size 11 crochet hook.  Real-life patterns that call for bulky yarn often can be worked in miniature fairly easily.

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