Category Archives: Mini Figures – all scales

What’s agoin on ‘ere?

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Tomato seed planting, general day-to-day doins and trying to get enough do-able exercise squeezed into a day; that’s what.

‘Tis Spring

I must own up to some thumb twiddling and a wee bit of mini-ing, though.

Those 1:24 stockinette figures

I think we left off with me more or less almost finishing three of these figures.  They were in need of suitable shapings around the joints and body, most of which I’ve done, but I did ‘chicken out’ on the foot dimpling and shaping.  That was mostly to do with the vagaries of my stitching up the bodies in the first place along with a little wandering of the inner wiring.  I decided to provide these chaps with strong footwear shaped to their imagined jobs and ignore the sewn ‘health’ of their “pedal extremities“.

theinfill blog, theinfill dolls house blog - 1:24 stockinette figure

The line up of the three
a sadly misused figure now with a head of hair
who morphed into a very bossy housekeeper

The blouse is one piece of lingerie sized lace wraped and stitched (no cutting) and part of a cut off bit left over from human trouser shortening, also wraped, a little glued and caught with a few stitches. Oh and she has leather shoes to give those feet a bit of shape.

Her face was horridly done in coloured water pencil directly on the made head.  I didn’t want to try stitching and 3D shaping on the fabric as I’d already found out how fragile the stockinette is when stuffed fairly tightly and how easily you can become the proud owner of a small figure with a hole or two in its head

The answer seemed to be to move on to making her a mask to replace and hopefully give more shape to the features and then stitch that on over the top, hiding the edges in the neck-collar area and hairline.

theinfill blog, theinfill dolls house blog - 1:24 stockinette figure

Small square of stockinette and a little wadding gives her a firm expression if a little over dramatic
The armature still works around the clothing and body shaping and she sits quite comfortably on the edge of a book
I suspect she needs a lorgnette to hold in a superior manner while she berates the workers

Moving on to the second victim

theinfill blog, theinfill dolls house blog - 1:24 stockinette figure

Ready for white shirt, probably with cuff protectors, black/grey striped waiscoat front and black trousers

Off to try to get the second exercise period squeezed in between the raindrops, though probably will cheat and wear the carpet out doing a circuit round and round inside as looks to be showers on and off all day 🙂

Three pairs of glasses, three pairs of scissors and four approaches

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This piece is edited from a lengthy photo record I’ve made 
for myself to keep track of the methods I used 
when trying the current self-challenge.)
Old self-challenge “Last formal report - comparing air-drying clays

A cack-handed elderly klutz takes up the self-challenge

We (or I) tend to fancy an item or imagine a build which I know full well is probably going to be more than a little beyond my capabilities and at the very least will set me a challenge.

Back in November I was willing myself back into the mini-ing malarkey after six months of inertia and had dug out a rather lovely hand-built fireplace – many apologies to the brilliant maker but I’ve lost track of how I bought it  – and I was playing around with the idea of a one room scene, possibly relating to the Borrowers(?) as I’ve got some bits of 1:24 and 1:48 knocking about, but more probably destined to become a Victorian Christmas scene with children around a tree.  These imaginings were conjured up still just in time for Xmas ’22.

To egg me on further, I bought a wonderful set of instructions for making my own 1:24 figures using stockinette fabric.

The beautifully designed and presented patterns I bought on Etsy come from Prairie Crocus Studio and I can highly recommend them if you want to have a go at making your own fabric figures – there are patterns for other scales and ‘beings’ too as well as dressed dolls.  They have a wire armature and stuffing so can be shaped and bent to suit your needs and be given the character and clothing you fancy .

I really was aware that buying this pattern was probably not the most wise choice for me to make.  I can be very clumsy and needlessly careless without knowing I’m doing whatever it is I’m a-doing-of.  Nevertheless, they were sooo tempting I could not resist the temptation to at least try.

Starting out

The pattern has clear lists of materials and equipment required, some of which I could see at once I’d have to compromise over.  The biggest one being I no longer have an accessible sewing machine.
(And oh yes, it has been.  Most of the challenge has turned out to be finding a work-around for this.)

The materials were, on the whole, easy to get hold of, but two things I had to research a little.  One was the gauge of wire and the other was the freezer paper.  I’m not sure if American gauge of wire measurements are the same this side of the Atlantic but here’s a table I used so I could buy in something suitable as all the sellers I came across quoted in millimetres. (gauge to mm).  It has worked for me as the wire I now have is very easy to cut and handle but strong.

Now, freezer paper – hmmm, I had been going to use ordinary parchment paper/butter paper as that’s mostly what I use between layers of items (eg homemade fish cakes or similar) in the freezer.  However, the mention in the instructions of ‘the glossy side’ of the paper used for tracing gave me pause for thought and so I went in search of freezer paper and am very glad I did.

Once the tracing of the pattern has been drawn on the dull side of the paper it is then ironed onto the folded fabric, making it stick to the surface, not unlike adding a transfer to a T-shirt, but you keep the paper on while you stitch through it.  Keeping the paper pattern stuck to the fabric gives a template for machine sewing around and holds the  pattern to the fabric much more strongly than pins.

Now’s the time

With most, if not quite all the materials to hand, and as the deco department store is on standby waiting for its stonework, I finally made myself have a go at one of these figures; a bit late now for a Christmas scene – or do I mean early?

The following is a brief saga of what can happen when a beautifully designed set of instructions, very clear and easy to follow, are let loose in the hands of a true cack-handed klutz  OK, a bit of tautology there, but the result is still the same.

I was concerned from outset that hand stitching would not give the required result but I wanted to know if it could be done by hand, and as it turns out, sewing machine stitching is pretty important to the making, not just for neatness/strength etc, but mostly so that the ironed down paper pattern will remove more easily.  I’m not that sure I could have done the stitching on a machine these days, as turning the underarm, crutch area and neck to head angles is probably beyond my current capabilities.

Results and decisions, noted in my photo aide-mémoire.

I’ll break off the photos here for a moment to tell you the changes I’d made in my method(s) for the 2nd run.

On the 1st run I found that the sealing of the cut seams with glue pre the cutting out of the figure, although painted on as a fine line, when turned right side out, made the limbs narrower internally and made trying to turn them out difficult causing extra stretch in the limbs. I was also surprised by the damage the glue did to the fabric of the head and I ended up covering up the original head area with a balaclava bag shape rather like a cushion cover.

I also judged that the hand stitching I’d done had caused some problems so I needed to eliminate one self-made problem at a time and chose to try to work on the difficulty turning right side out to work on first.  For the 2nd run I drew around the pattern rather than tracing exactly on it, to give me some elbow room as it were to investigate the ways of turning the figure to its right side after gluing a freshly cut edge.

Regarding gluing the cut seam, I’ve cut the figure out a little bit at a time and glued the cut edges (on their very ends) as I go round cutting out.  It also gave me the opportunity to use a thicker white glue in very small amounts rather than having to be absorbed by two layers of fabric when painted on. This eliminated the excess bulk I had made on the first run when I laid on the glue pre cutting out.

The glue to the edges of the back slit stops the fraying but there’s still a danger of me laddering/stretching when adding the armature and stuffing.

 

I did try putting a little stuffing at end of limbs before inserting the armature but it would be great if there were a way of wrapping the armatures in wadding pre insertion.

I put the vertical armature in and stuffed head and legs before adding arms supports and found it much easier – I’ve never worked with an armature before and it confuses me re getting the shaping for the back and front when stuffing the body.

I also stitched up the back opening while gradually stuffing to help judge body shaping; that is, once the legs were stuffed I stitched up the stretched opening to just above waist level.

3rd run

Pulling of stitches

As the instruction is to machine stitch round these little folk, I’m assuming the paper pattern gets so nicely perforated by the machine needle as you go around that taking the paper off should be almost as easy as separating postage stamps, except where you start and finish off.  Hand stitching does not provide the same perfs.

And I still caught the paper and couldn’t get it off cleanly.  So far haven’t taken this one any further.

4th run

Still wasn’t deedy enough to easily get the paper out around and between the legs so a bit of stitch ‘harrassing’ there.

theinfill blog, theinfill dolls house blog - 1:24 stockinette figure

4th run: Outcome so far
Will continue with this one and finish off the other two waiting for their detailing.
I notice that our little chappy has come up a smidgeon under size perhaps(?)

Bit f a lengthy edit but it is three days worth of trying it out and has been a great learning experience at the end of which there’s a group of little people – what more can one ask for?  Haven’t yet decided who and what they will be but will keep on with them and will probably have futher goes in an attempt to get more comfy with the stuffing-armature combo which, sadly, I still do find confusing.

Perhaps I should have bought the 1:12 pattern in the first place but so it goes.

The wallpaper for the deco shop room box has arrived so must push on with that too.

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Three pairs of glasses?  Yup, distance, close up and very close up.

Three pairs of scissors?  One fabric, one paper, one thread.

 

Looking for a book

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Her hair is knitting wool glued here and there and the earings are twisted silver wire stitched into place.
The T-shirt is made from bits of a toe-sock.   I’ve worn this style of sock for about 15+ years and when they wear out I always keep at least one of a pair in my hoard.  So her bodice is the big toe and the arms are the top rib turned inside out

Member of Dolls Houses Past and Present

Maintenance day at Nostalgia Close

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A short visit to Deco of the 30s and 50s

I always pick a sunny day to do this job and tho today should be a gardening day, Nostalgia Close calls. The main structure is built from a mix of card, foamboard and wood strip sandwiches and I’m keeping an eye on it as don’t know if it will warp etc.

Having been all round it a bit of dusting and checking of elelectrics, who has fallen over and similar tasks are all the maintenance needed I think.  Nothing in the actual vertical structure seems to have warped, tho the MDF base (the only continuous sort of ‘wooden’ area in the build) has bent up at one of the front corners – should have been slightly thicker MDF.  However, the electrics need fixing for the upstairs areas where there is a mix of battery and 12v mains.  There’s two small strips for the plugs for the mains ones and the one that services upstairs is possibly faulty, or one or more of its plugs are so, as that will need more time than I’ve got today, I must at that job to a side list for the future.  If it turns out to be a break in a wire within the structure then I’m afraid it’ll have to stay that way, and if necessary a further LED light could be added here and there perhaps.

While I was at it I re-set-out the house on its table.  This is the slice of cake house, where a quarter of it moves away revealing the other three quarters.  Now I’ve managed to straighten it up a little more, the human eye can catch sight of most of the internal bits without having to move the qaurter slice any further away.

 

theinfill blog, theinfill dolls house blog – scratch build Nostalgia Close update

The bedrooms are also visible more or less all in one go, with distant view of part of the bathroom down the end of the landing

theinfill blog, theinfill dolls house blog – scratch build Nostalgia Close update

Round the back, the bathroom and kitchen are still viewable thro their own fourth wall door