Sidetracking Can Be Fun

The "Rusty Needle" came back to haunt me yesterday after I wrote about it. It was one of my all time favorite projects. I was a needle worker before becoming a miniaturist. I taught classes and hand painted canvases for one of the stores here.

One of my friends came to one of our Wednesday mini meetings with a piece of mini needlework that she had not worked on for a while. When she went to pull the needle out of her fabric it was so rusty that she had difficulty removing it! That is how the name of the shop came to be.

She had the raw wood Ballhagen building and didn't want to use it so she gave it to me. I, in turn, made it into a needlework shop and then re gifted it to her as the "Rusty Needle". She loved it. When she gave up minis altogether I got it back.

It was in need of some love and attention once again. I started by stripping everything out of it and removing some of the trim. The brick paper that I originally used was loosening and I decided to replace it.

I happened on some file folders at a garage sale that were made of reddish brown card. One side was kind of powdery looking and the other was a darker color with a bit of a shine. It was the perfect color for brick. I am cutting it into individual blocks 1/4" by 3/4". I first painted the walls with a very messy mixture of gray paint. That is, I didn't mix the white and black all the way and just painted it on every which way with a 1" brush. After that I started at the top of the walls and worked down in a regular brick pattern. When the glue was dry I used a stylus to go over all of the mortar. I have two sides done now. One more to go. I think I am going to leave the back plain.

Here is some of the stuff that I have ready for the inside. I got carried away making bolts of fabric (133)and fat quarters this time. Every one of the bolts is different! There are also 100 or so spools of real thread.

I need to redo the yarn skeins that were in the bin at the rear of the store. The ones that were in there weren't really savable.

All of the embroidery floss is banded in real DMC labels that I cut down to size.

I have more stuff made for it than I thought. Do you want to see it all?

That's about it. Back to the bricking. Maybe, just maybe, I will actually finish it this time. I really miss seeing it put together.

Next I have to decide on wallpaper or paint for the interior.......Decisions, decisions.......