A Follower's Dilemna- Who Can Help?

Oh, I do hope I don't embarrass her terribly, but in her giveaway comment, Lucy Q, one of the blog's followers, said she had a 1920's dollhouse still in the box that was given to her by a friend, and was looking for inspiration to get started. She thought maybe winning the giveaway would do the trick.

Why do I keep remembering this, and SO want her to get that house out and get started? Yes, I'm a mentor by nature, and am always looking for a way to help someone meet their own goals. But I know too, that we all have little procrastinations in our lives , and sometimes need a kick in the pants to get started!

A dollhouse though seems to be a relatively reasonable thing to procrastinate on- unless you feel guilty or sad about it.

I bought a good friend a dollhouse kit two Christmas's ago. The real point was to have something to work on together, and I picked the house without consulting with her. We only have room for one house with my huge antique dollhouse in the living room.

I knew she wasn't terribly motivated , but couldn't figure out why until she confessed a year and a half later that she didn't get excited about the Antique Shop kit I bought her. So once I get Gammage House completely constructed, the plan is to shop for a house together, although she fancies building one from scratch.

Some of the things I am using in Gammage House are things that I have had, and have been meaning to use for years and years, What got me started- finding the little dolls, having an idea that they needed a home, then coming up with a story based on my genealogical research.

I have a fantasy that each of us would send Lucie a little gift for her dollhouse. Something to get her started, from the period of her choice.

Or sometimes a gift is a word of advice, some help , a story about your own house and getting started. Who can help?

One More Day to the Giveaway!

Make sure that you have followed the blog , and also commented,so you can be entered in the Giveaway! Drawing will be tomorrow at 6:30 PM my time.

See the Tutorial for Making Your Own Fabric to Scale

I have added a page (see the top of the blog) on how to make your own scale fabric. I was having trouble finding fabric both the right weight, and with a small enough print to make a dress for Althea, so worked on making my own fabric. There are three different weight fabrics represented. Check it out by clicking above, or by following this link. http://halfscaledollhousegammagehouse.blogspot.com/p/scale-historic-fabric.html

Althea's New Clothes

Now for a new challenge- making clothing for Althea . I made Persis a dress which I am basically happy with, but I have something in mind for Althea's dress that may be a little different .


I don't know if you remember, but as the sisters were getting ready for the family portrait, they had quite a spat, because Althea insisted on wearing her bloomers in the picture! We often use the word bloomers to mean underwear, but bloomers were actually outer clothing , and were named after Amelia Bloomer. Bloomers were trousers gathered at the ankle.

For more information on dress reform and bloomers, see
Dress Reform

Sensible dress for a woman physician at a time of huge skirts.

Less than attractive, but functional.

Poor Althea

I got the bottoms of Althea's legs made, and was excited to put them back on so that I can finish dressing her. Unfortunately , the fabric of her body is too fragile to sew them on. I really , really don't want to put a whole new body on her. You can see why people advertising dolls say "Her clothes are sewn on and I didn't want to remove them"!

I' m going to try adding some fabric stabilizer. If that doesn't work, i'll put new fabric over the top like a second skin. I want to experiment with putting a wire armature on the outside of the body so that she can be posed , so the body needs to be strong.

Interesting - see how her head is attached to the body. She doesn't have holes in her shoulder plate. I'm not sure what is going on with that- i will have to check to see if the twin doll has holes. Doll people say interesting things, don't they!

1/16 Furniture is Much Better!

I've been talking about the dolls being too large for a lot of the half scale furniture, even though I'm happy with the size of the house for them. I ordered some 1/16 furniture, and am in general, much happier, particularly with the chairs. The dressing table however, seems too tall- I think I've figured out a way to fix that. All of it is the red finish, and I'd like to cover the fabric with some antique fabric I have.

The table looks too large for the house , but good for the dolls. I'll just have to play with the sizes and see what works best.

The sofa still feels a bit small for Julia .

The dressing table is very tall for Julia.

The table seems tall for the 2nd floor .

But all things considered , the 1/16 furniture fits better than the 1:24.

Not Chairs - Lots of Well Needed Sleep

If you've been reading , you'll know I've had a pretty crazy month. I think sometimes my body knows that the only way to get me to slow down is for me to get sick- so here comes the bronchitis ! I worked on bits and pieces - I'm having a time fastening Althea's legs back to her body without replacing the antique fabric. I'm thinking I may have to attach them to a pair of pantaloons that sew on... Or maybe suspenders.. I think that is just the frustration talking.

As I took this picture I convinced myself that I am crazy to think I can save this leg fabric! So tomorrow, new fabric for new legs. Oh, her feet are fine!

One Sixteenth Scale

With a lot of help from Yahoo groups, I found out that my dolls are actually 1/16 scale. There may be a lot of giveaways in the future because I've already bought a lot of half scale .

Some of the furniture I bought will still work, if repurposed and kept in areas not usually occupied by the family.

I found a good book, Dolls's House Do It Yourself Book , by Venus Dodge . I found it on Amazon used, and it has both patterns in 1:24 and 1:16 . So I'm ready to get started on the furniture for the family ! I get tickled , because it calls a water heater a geyser , and has a lot of other terms not usually used.

I'll share soon, because I plan to make some chairs this weekend.

Sharing a tip on the "Prove you are not a robot" Codes

I disabled this on my blog- I still get to approve the comments before they are published. Some people have had trouble with spam without it and some don't know how to turn it off. I have trouble reading the things,and I guess I have trouble discriminating sounds, because the "listen" option is almost impossible for me!

Commenting on the IPad or IPhone can be so frustrating if predictive text is on- it always tries to turn the random letters into a word. After about the millionth bout - the last one being the iPad trying to turn hrtdmec into heretic(!) , I accidentally discovered a trick. I type the code, then other random letters until it stops predicting. Then I erase the extra letters. For example, when I typed hrtfmecsh, the prediction stopped turning up, and I just erased the SH at the end. Probablyas clear as mud, but I hope helpful!

Website for Historic Accuracy

I hope you can tell that my story about the Gammages is based in research. Web research of course. Recent work on the house has attempted to use details from the period, although I am behind the curve because I started with a very Colonial Williamsburg type house. I've tried to use facts, with only 2-3 years leeway. I started this because I wanted learn about this period of time , but then got fascinated by the research itself, and Providence in particular. If you are also into Genealogy and History , I've found a great blog. It even breaks events and sources down by year.

Remember- the Gammage family is not real!

The blog: Nineteenth Century Historical Tidbits
The blogger, Lynn Coleman, describes herself as a novelist who writes contemporary and historical novels . Thanks to Lynn for an incredible resource!