The linens for the bed were the easiest thing I had left to make for my Princess and the Pea miniature “The Gift of Sensitivity.” At least that’s what I thought. I already had a sparkly comforter made in 2009 when I was assembling all those mattresses, but I still needed sheets and pillows. I guessed that it would take an hour to make the last of the bedding, soak them in watered-down glue, and drape them over the protected mattresses. It actually took three, and that doesn’t count the insane drying time.
First of all, I hadn’t thought things through. I needed to cover one of my mattresses with the same fabric I was using for the sheets for things to look right. This meant covering up one of my mattresses. Fortunately, there was one with a fabric design a little too big in scale. Unfortunately, that design showed through the sheet fabric, so I had to line it with muslin. I then hand-sewed the sheet to the mattress for a snug fit. It wasn’t hard to do, but it did take time.
Many miniaturists use glue and a mini iron when working with fabric. The technique worked well enough for the top sheet, but when I tried to make two miniature pillows this way, I hated them. I wound up hand-sewing instead, and deciding that one pillow was plenty.
All my fabrics were chosen because they were the right color or finish. I didn’t think about what they were made of. It turns out synthetics don’t crease easily. The nightgown, which is made out of a cotton handkerchief, draped like a charm (as you will see next week), and dried overnight. The bedding however was still quite wet, so I moved them close to one of our baseboard heaters to speed up the process. It took another two days for them to dry completely, which is astonishing because where I live the problem is usually keeping things from drying too quickly. In the end, the comforter didn’t really crease. The covers do look like they’ve been kicked about in frustration, so I decided I could live with the results.
Even though it was the same synthetic as the lining of the comforter, the pillow worked a little better, probably because it was stuffed with scraps of cotton batting. I soaked the pillow in my diluted glue solution following the instructions in the video then shoved it into a container only slightly smaller than it is. I weighed the middle down with a smooth stone. It took a day and a half to dry, and is now dramatically lumpy.
While I was waiting for the comforter to dry, I thought seriously about making a different one out of cotton, something that would actually do what I wanted. While I love the sparkly purple knit of the existing cover, the real reason I didn’t make a new one is simple: the desire to be done ran every other thought into the ground. As soon as something was good enough, I moved on.
As mentioned above, draping the nightgown was a completely different experience. Tune in next week to read about it and the other accessories I made.
So cute, Kit.
Thanks. It was a bit of a struggle…