Preventing edges from raveling: I ran a basting thread along each seam allowance before cutting and cut my seams extra wide. Also holding the fabric by the "body" part so the cut edge was away from my fingers helped hold down the raveling. The extra seam allowance can be trimmed, and when flat-felling, French-seaming or other seam finishing allows for an un-ravelable (new word?) finish without any more bulk. Overcasting in 1/12th just seems like overkill. However I have learned so much about gluing I'm ready to try it.

olegator

Windsocks. I have just one thing to add to the directions for making mini wind socks and that is to use silk ribbon if at all possible. I made them with both silk and narrow satin ribbon and the satin ones are straight as a stick and un-natural looking. The silk ribbon is worth the additional price. They almost flutter. The middle width of the three widths available is best too - can't recall the millimeter of it though.

Jeanette Zanio

Embroideries and Patterns from 19th century Vienna
by Raffaella Serena
ISBN 1-85149-283-6
I had forgotten how ravishingly beautiful this book is. It bulges with charts and pictures of 19th century needle points and oh the colours! One can drown in the rainbows. It is soooo beautiful. Several of the charts arefor small motifs.

Helen from York

size dolls (16", etc..- not Barbie), Hampstead House Books in Thornhill, Ontario, Canada has 2 wonderful books right now. They can be ordered on-line at www.hhbooks.com or by phone 905.881.0607. If you are ordering by phone, these two books are from the catalogue FE2, which just came out.

The two books are:
- - High Fashion Knitting For Dolls - Item # 120423 Price is $9.99CDN. Patterns are for dresses, blouses, pleated skirts along with lace edgings, collars, and table cloths.
- - Dressing Dolls with Susan York - Item # 120365 Price is $5.99CDN. Patterns are for 10 complete outfits.

And if you're into web design and you like to hoard floral backgrounds, they have a great cd rom + Book (windows and mac format) of copyright free floral designs. "Floral Patterns" is the title of the book and cd rom. Item # is 118661 and the price is $12.99CDN.

Joy in Pointe Claire

Handkie Dressing: Greetings! And to the lady who wanted miniature doll patterns (using handkies) try our Miniature Doll web site (from the MSATMiniDoll list). There are over 40 how to projects, to view and learn. Here is the URL http://msatminidolls.minilists.com/index.html

Dana

Hanky Dressing: Dressing a doll with "hanky" --the article is in" Dolls in Miniature", Fall 1992, Vol II, Issue No. 3. Written by Loretta Kasza.

Jackie

Miniature Quilts: In response to the request for info and patterns for quilts for 1/12 dollhouses, I have free patterns on my web site for pieced quilts in the 1/12 inch scale. I have just added miniature quilt kits to the site. www.miniquiltmaker.com

Nancy

Pillow Stuffing for the long round pillows: I use the foam hair rollers. Remove the plastic piece, and wrap the fabric around the foam, tucking the ends of the fabric into the hole that's at both ends of the roller (where the plastic piece used to be). Then cover that up with a circle of fabric, lace, or whatever.

Viola

Crochet pattern sources: The following sites have patterns and information on crochet patterns. The three Yahoo groups require registering and joining, but they are free and both great groups. When you join you have access not only to the archives, but the files, photos, bookmarks and all kinds of information. Roz has great patterns for free on her site.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MiniatureCrochet/Yahoo! Groups :Miniature Crochet
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MiniKnittingandCrochet/Yahoo!Groups:MiniKnittingandCrochet
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MSATMiniThreadsYahoo! Groups :MSATMiniThreads
http://www.geocities.com/rozwalts/ROZ'S CROCHET

Lee Ann, Hopewell, NJ

Bargello: The earliest known examples of Bargello aka Florentine/Hungarian point/Irish embroidery/Flamestitch work were found in Lower Saxony as altar frontals in the 14th and 15th Centuries. It became all the rage in Colonial America in the second half of the 18th Century. Therefore, you're all set for just about any period.

Bobbie Schoonmaker, IGMA Fellow

Toile and Colonial Williamsburg: Yes - Toile and Colonial Williamsburg go together like peanut butter and jelly! We visited C.W. this past September - and loved every minute of it. It was very well organized, very lovely, very interesting, educational -- and we got a LOT of exercise walking the 'old streets'....and shopping in all the wonderful 'old shops' nearby.

Toile was usually combined with a very large check fabric - about 1-1/2" square checks! - in a matching color (blue toile, blue checks, for example). Red/white checks were also 'in vogue'. They used some pretty wild colors in Colonial Williamsburg - things we'd consider a bit 'much' now - green and purple walls and woodwork, for example.

We stopped and chatted with the weaver for a long time while we were there - you can interact with all the craftsmen/women and find out some fascinating things -- and learned that during the Colonial period, cotton fabrics were MORE expensive than silk! The reason was quite practical: The cotton gin hadn't been invented at that time, and in order to get cotton fabric, you had to sit by firelight (after a hard day's work) and pull cotton seeds out of the fluff....and they're hard to pull out! It was common practice to give unruly children this job - especially during long winter months and rainy days when they couldn't go outside and grew restless. Probably where the phrase 'make work' came from..... Mama just had to 'make work' for the kids to do to keep them out of her hair!

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has a nice web site, and there are LOTS of books, pictures, and more information on the period and the area. Search for 'Colonial Williamsburg' - in Virginia - and I'm sure you'll find all sorts of references. The C.W. Foundation is a wealth of information on all sorts of things - and responsible for a great many reproductions of furniture, fabric, wallpaper, etc., from the period. Additionally, you can search www.amazon.com and find a lot of books on C.W. -- as well as your local library, more than likely. You can get the best prices on books, I believe, at www.bookfinder.com - where you can buy nice used or new books through smaller dealers, through one large book buyers/sellers system that referees the whole thing.

Linda Gale

Miniature Quilts: Someone asked about making 1/12 scale quilts. I have a book by Dinah Travis called "The Complete Miniature Quilt Book" publ. Krause Publications in Iola, WI, ISBN 0-87341-595-7 It gives patterns and instructions for a couple of dozen dh-sized quilts. Also tells you, as an aside, how to make beds and bedding, and has pictures of them in the author's own dh. I was happy to pay Cdn$30 for it several months ago, and saw a bunch at Chapters last week with the bargain books at $6! Ah well. It's a lovely book, and instructions are very clear.

Kay in Ottowa, Canada

Sun Bonnet: Here is a very, very easy way to make a bonnet (it's how we made them in grade school for ourselves, out of construction paper). Try it out of paper first - if you use cloth for the final ones, you might want to stiffen the fabric a little first (I think colored paper would be fine, though, for bonnets so small). Your piece of paper/cloth should measure about 2" by 1.5" (after you get the technique it'll be easier to figure out sizing). Lay it flat the long way across, and measure it into thirds. At each third point, cut a slit from the bottom up, about 1/2 way up (that's 2 cuts total).

______________

Grace

Silk fabric: Etcetera, Etc, in Roswell, NM carries a wonderful selection of fabrics and trims. Pam Kille is a very nice person to do business with, and has a great catalog that includes samples of the products. Pam Kille, 13 Isla Ct., Roswell, NM 88201 e-mail: rwk@rt66.com

Carol in MN

DIY needlepoint design: I am sure there are professional needlepoint design packages available for your computer, but if you only operate in a small way like me, there is an alternative. For this you need to have Microsoft Excel on your system - other spreadsheet packages may offer the same facility, I don't know.

FOR THE GRAPH PAPER
Open Microsoft Excel. To the left of the A and above the 1 there is a box. Click on the box. The whole spreadsheet will go black. eek! But don't worry - all this means is 'globalisation' i.e. anything you do to one cell will happen to all cells. Move the cursor to the ABC etc. line, and move it along until suddenly on the vertical line between A and B it will turn into a cross. Click on the left hand side of the mouse and drag the cross to the left - you will see every cell become narrower. Now do the same thing between the 1 and the 2, and every horizontal cell will become narrower. Play around until you have the size graph paper you like. Click on FILE in the upper left hand corner, go to PAGE SET UP, go to SHEET - under PRINT will be listed GRIDLINES - click on that box. That will give you hard lines on your printed out sheet.

Now for the fun part, the coloring in.

HOW TO COLOR IN
So you have your empty graph paper. Move towards the center ie go down and to the right, as your design will take up space. Say you want to design a bunny cross stitch or needlepoint design. You will want brown for the bunny. To the right of the screen is a tilted paint pot. Click on the square you want to use so it is highlighted. Go to the little arrow beside the paint pot and click on that - a whole spectrum of colors is revealed. Move the cursor around until the name of the color you want is revealed. Click on the color using left hand side of mouse.

Your cell will go brown if you have chosen brown. The color stripe under the paint pot will also have turned to brown which means all you have to do now is highlight a cell, then click on the paint pot itself and the cell will go brown. When you need to change colors simply go back to the spectrum.

WHAT IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE??
One of the most boring things about doing all this manually on graph paper is if you make a mistake because it makes a mess making it right. Here it is simple. If you make a mistake, go back to the paint pot spectrum - at the top is an elongated box 'No Fill'. So click on the square you wish to 'rub out', go to the spectrum, and click on 'No Fill'. Your wrong color will disappear.

WARNING
I assume you will want to print out and use the colored graph you have made. Make the colors more extreme in your computer coloring in - if you make them charming and subtle your printer, who is an uncultured yob, will not perceive the subtle gradations and nuances of hue, and make all the blue family say, two blues, when you have used 5 blues. This is not what you want.

Helen from York, England

Dollhouse Mouse: "where do I get or how do I make a mouse that stands on two legs and wears a Tutu?"

Since your daughter is 5, she probably wants the mouse from her book. How about a stuffed mouse?

Get a piece of tracing paper and use a pencil from a sewing shop that will transfer using an iron. (If you can't find this use a sharpened crayon.) Trace the mouse face she knows from the book and use this as an iron-on to a piece of pale, Angelina colored fabric. (Allow for seams.)

You should use the side of the face and do this for each side. Trace the body, straight on, like a gingerbread man, stitch and stuff. When you do the head, you can embroider the features with colored thread, and add bead eyes. Add the ears, tail and tutu and you will have a doll your daughter will cherish, mostly because you made it for her.

Laurie Sisson

Costumes: http://www.costumes.org/pages/pattern_links.htm This site has lots and lots of links to patterns and costumes of different periods, holidays and whatever. Very nice.

Costumes: http://www.costumes.org/pages/pattern_links.htm This site has lots and lots of links to patterns and costumes of different periods, holidays and whatever. Very nice.

Leslie in WA

SHABBY CHIC FABRIC: Tammy, the traditional tea-dying will mellow the colors, but you may not want them beigey. If that's ok, just brew up a triple-strength pot of cheap tea and dunk the fabric. (You may have to repeat a couple of times to tone it down enough; it will look darker wet than when it dries.) Or if you want it white but faded, my friend Linda restores old lace. Her method of lightening it is to wash in gentle soap, then dunk in undiluted lemon juice and set in the sun to dry....small bits of trim ride around in the back window of the car for a week or two to get natural sun fading, which would also work with small bits of fabric.

Loretta Sniarowski

Men's long handles & other 1:12th scale clothing: Dolls' House Needlecrafts by Venus A. Dodge see P. 32, Gentlemen's Combinations (long johns). Making & Dressing Dolls' House Dolls In 1/12 Scale by Sue Atkinson Has all sorts of clothing patterns, I used this book to dress a cook and a butler and to wig the cook, and was quite pleased with my first effort (I'm NOT a perfectionist!).

Havana (FL) Holly