Friday 24 February 2012

Edwardian Dolls House: the Carpets and Floor Rugs

A variety of 1:12 scale dolls house carpets
I'm back from holiday now, so thought I would show you some of the examples of carpets and rugs in my Edwardian dolls house. Although I have embroidered most of them, in a few of the rooms I have used other things I have bought or made. You might get some ideas from these, especially if you don't like embroidery!
  The large green and cream rug is one manufactured as a 1:12 scale miniature and readily available from dolls house suppliers. I have it in the dining room. It's beautifully woven and the pattern and colours are traditional. I've also seen suitably scaled ones such as this, although usually smaller in size, as inserts in greeting cards in upmarket stationery and museum shops. Similarly, the woven bookmarks you see around can be used as hall runners or stair carpets.
  The plain blue rug I made for the night nursery. It's a rectangle of thin, soft felt, with borders of wide navy ribbon folded along the edges and glued on.
  In an antique shop, I found the cream and pink floral carpet, perfect for the governess' room. It is actually an example of a 'present' that was given as a freebie in cigarette packets in the 1930s. On the back is stamped 'Westminster Tobacco Co. Ltd. London'. Although it's a bit faded and spotted, I like it for its interesting history.
   Patterned with squares, the last rug started life as a money purse from Turkey. That is, it was a purse until I got hold of it! I unpicked each side, took out the zip and backed the two pieces with iron-on vilene so they wouldn't fray. For the fringes, I glued a wide piece of cream ribbon at each end so half of it overhung the end of the rug. Then when the glue had dried, I very carefully, with a pin, separated the strands into fringes.

2 comments:

  1. Your Turkish rug puts me in mind of a NZ couple that I met on a bus trip around Turkey in 2000. She was a keen miniaturist as am I, and we spotted the potential of all those wonderful miniature carpets and book marks.
    Cheers Yvonne

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    1. Hi Yvonne. I spent a couple of days in Istanbul last month & was very tempted by the smallest carpets. They have such a great range of colours & patterns.

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