In the process of pulling out the christmas stuff...

Pulling out all of the holiday decorations a bit early...

And yes, I did print myself tiny bins for this. All the other Christmas props came from hobby lobby. They have lots of tiny miniatures like the lights which I found in the dollhouse area or the candy canes and hats that I found with the general holiday crafts stuff. 

Otherwise, I'm getting ready for the etsy cyber week sale which starts on Nov 22. As planned I'll be closing orders on Nov. 30th and plan on having all the packages shipped out in my usually 2 week processing time. That will leave plenty of time for things to arrive before Christmas. 

If you give a dog a bowl

 A few weeks ago Anne Field from Field of Dolls asked me to make a prototype of a dog food bowl. So I dug out the one breyer dog I have and got to work designing a bowl in scale for him.

And in the style of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If you give a dog a bowl,

You should give him a matching collar,

And then you should give him a bone. This dog is majestic, unlike my real life one...

Bowls and bones are both available on my etsy.

Stable Help

 I found two new stable hands at the home depot of all places. They're a bit pale... and boney... and skeletoney but I'm sure they're fine...

Just fine...

Ahhhh!

Blanket Making Trial 2: Improvements could be made

 I tried again... I like the pattern I used for this version a bit more, although I'm still tweaking it. I added trim on the top and some contouring in the back. Still need to work on my belly strap placement. I feel like both straps need to move further to the front and the back straps need to move down a bit. But it is a nice looking fully functioning blanket! (And it glows in the dark).

The other big takeaway would be to make the front buckle ahead of time so that it can be properly sewn on, right now I've just been fabric gluing it on.

Yes it does match the spooky Halloween set. This whole set (minus the horse) is now available on my etsy for $42. https://www.etsy.com/listing/865166646/spooky-halloween-delux-set-model-horse?ref=shop_home_feat_1&frs=1

To do a blanket with back tapering I decided to try sewing the two sides together (did the same with the felt piece too). Then I ironed them so they were nice and flat.

Then I added the middle trim.

You can see the tapering worked pretty well to make the back look nice.

Then I glued on then sewed on the straps. I've already discussed how placement could be better. 

`

After sewing down.

Am I getting better? Yes. Am I going to need to order more blanket hooks? Yes. Did seeing desktop stables update about lots of gorgeous halloween blankets make me discouraged? ( a little, but really more determined). Pro Life Tip: It's okay to look to others and compare your work, to see what you want to improve on. But you shouldn't judge your work against other people's, the only person you need to do better than is the person you were yesterday.

Blanket Making Trial 1

 I have always loved horse blankets. One of the best things about this hobby is that there are few things that prevent you from making really cool ones. Real blankets need lots of fabric and to be weatherproof and durable. The only limits for model horse blankets are pattern size, imagination, ... and sewing skills. Thanks to this lovely pandemic, I've outfitted a lot of people with masks and all that practice has really upped my nonexistent sewing skills! 

It just doesn't quite touch....  That's one of the only big blunders. The only other big issue is how wavy my stitching is although it does match the bias tape and it didn't go off the bias tape, just not as exact as I'd like it to be.

But I figured the best way to learn is with practice so I'll keep trying. In the meantime, I figured there's no harm in going through the process to make this one.

Supplies:

• Fabric
• White felt
• Rio rondo buckles (#B5)
• Rio rondo blanket clasps (#HD825)
• 1/4" black grosgrain  ribbon (Hobby lobby or hairbowcenter)
• 1/8" black grosgrain ribbon (Joanns or hairbowcenter)
• 1/4" bias tape (black)

I cut the top out of one of the fabrics I have a lot of... I could have used muslin for my first demo, but I figured it would turn out well enough that wouldn't be a problem. The bottom fabric is white felt which won't cause a lot of rubs and won't stain the model.

These are my 1/4" ribbon straps. For those interested, the measurements going left to right are 3.5 in, 5 in, 9 in, and 10 in.

I folded it in half then measured a 1/2 in and glued about 2 inches of the back strap, then tried that fancy turn I've been seeing everyone using. Looking at other maker's blankets, it looks like that part is usually done at an angle? 

Anyway the reason I used fabric glue is that pins would have damaged the ribbon.

With only the top piece I sewed down all of the straps. I also put the hooks on the short part. I sewed down to where my ribbon was folded over but left a bit of movement available at the ends. The other side, be careful not to sew all the way to the edge, that will make it impossible to put the bias on.

This is after I put the first side of the bias on after carefully aligning the top fabric with the white felt. I need to work on corners and turns, but they came out okay. I then flipped it over and did the other side of the bias, careful not to sew over the straps or anything.

I didn't take pictures of the next step, but I put the other half of the buckles on and I put buckles and straps on the front.

I got a big milk crate!

The title says it all. We went to the home depot to get yard stuff and I saw a milk crate (real size) and decided I needed it. You can never have enough milk crates! XD

Is September too early for Halloween? Christmas?

I'm looking for things to break up this monotony. There's so much bad news. In this hobby, in the real world. And amidst all of this, I went to hobby lobby. I needed wood boxes to make more tack boxes and some dowel rods because I always need dowel rods. Hobby lobby has the best dowel rods, they are much sturdier than the ones you can find at Joanns and the grain doesn't raise as much when you paint them.

I wanted the squirrels. But I already had pumpkins for a little holiday freebie. I put the squirrels back.

Then... Christmas. 

I am not ready for Christmas... yet. But hobby lobby is. And they have a lot of nice miniature things ready to go.

I really liked the trees. I will need some soon. (after Halloween).

And tinier trees plus wreaths. ( I will be back for these.)