Shortcuts and Old Styles...

I am all about shortcuts when at all possible. I decided to see what a skylight or dormer would look like on the workshop.

Sneaky person that I am, I always save all of the scrap pieces of the punch out dollhouses until I am finished with the structure. See that piece leaning against the side? That is where that end of the building was.

Rather than do a lot of figuring of angles and using a lot of geometry, I simply laid that piece against a piece of foamcore, making sure that the edge of the side of the house was parallel to the edge of the foamcore. That gave me a straight vertical line at the end of the skylight. In other words, the front corner. Then I simply drew the shape of the side on the foam core, twice. cut a piece the height of the end and the width that I wanted the dormer. One piece for the top of the skylight. That was the same width as the front piece and as long as the top of the side. I glued the top and front between the two side pieces. That's all there was to it.

I will do the finished piece from luan door skin. More sturdy.

First I tried a straight forward skylight. It seems too low for me and besides, it modernizes the lines of the structure.

We almost lost Tessie. She insisted on trying the skylight mock up as a slide. She has a thing for slides. Remember the incedent with the staircase in the Clockwork Cottage, with the bathtub?

Zar had to pull her up to the peak of the roof, before she crashed and burned.

Then I tried putting a couple of window frames on the front to see how that would look, with the additional height.

No decisions so far. I really need to decide what time period is going to live here. Right now, I am leaning towards the dormer. More headroom. Less contemporary. That means more cutting.

Before I get back to work, I have something to show those of you that are interested in needlework.

I went over to April's this morning and she is doing some serious cleaning out.

She gave me the shirt off of my own back! I flashed on this a couple of weeks ago. It is a blouse that I made and embroidered about 30 years ago...She used to wear it sometimes. I have no hope of ever wearing it again....It seems to have shrunk...I know I didn't get any bigger....Hey! Even April can't get into it now....I know it's the shirt tha got smaller.

Anyway, this is for the naysayers that told me that the new fangled acrylic. washable, embroidery thread that Coats and Clark put out in the 80s wasn't any good. They said use wool and have it dry cleaned....I didn't listen. I like to try new things. I bought a whole bunch of the stuff. As I was buying it, I guess that nobody else was. The price kept dropping and I think that some of the skeins were only ten cents a piece.

Let's put it this way. The colors are just as nice as they were when they were new. The texture of the thread is still beautiful....No matting or fuzzing.

I have crewel pieces done with wool, in that same time frame, that look like the cat slept on them and had a bad night.

Don't tell anybody. I still have a stash somewhere of this great yarn....I may just have to find them and make another blouse. One that fits me or April.

I can't do that yet though. I need to play with my dormer/skylight.

See you tomorrow.