From The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Frank B. Cudworth

The information on this piece of paper is amazing, but how accurate or true is it?  It is from John Womble’s file at the DAR in Washington, DC.  It is the only piece of paper in the said file on him.  Some of the children listed that John Washington had with his second wife Rhoda Caroline are children that I’ve never heard of, and haven’t been mentioned on a census.  In the 1900 census, Caroline says that she gave birth to 7 children and 5 are living.  This would correlate with why I had no knowledge of Mary or Almedia.  That part can be verified by another document.  The birth years in the birth dates of her siblings don’t match the information that I’ve found about her siblings from other information.  What’s funny is that the birthdays tally with other information that I have on John W. and Caroline’s kids.  I can’t figure out why the years are so off, but maybe that’s just how Maude was.  Maude gives her birth year as 1874, but that’s not possible because she’s listed on the 1870 census as being 1 year old.  This would mean she was born about 1869.

In regards to her half-siblings, no birth information is given and she doesn’t list the last three children, Franklin, Ruffin, and Jesse.  This makes me think that they died before she knew about them.  Maude doesn’t mention the death date for her dad’s first wife, Mary Jane and this makes me think that she didn’t know this information.  Perhaps, she didn’t list out her half-siblings birth dates because they weren’t something that her family celebrated.  I sort of had the impression that those children may have been old enough to live on their own after their father remarried.  Maude and her siblings may not have had much if any contact with the children from their father’s previous relationship.  This scenario breathes life into my previous notion that John W.’s first wife and three youngest children died during the war or that the youngest children died soon after the war or at least before 1870.

There is the possibility that John W.’s 1^st wife divorced him while he was in Nashville and that she took the 3 youngest children with her when the marriage ended.  However, I really doubt that they divorced.  I know that I will probably never know for sure, but I really feel that his first wife died and that the younger children soon followed her. 

In the 1860 census, Mary Jane’s youngest child, Jesse was 2 months old when the enumerator visited the family on 29 September 1860.  That means that Jesse may have been born 29 July.  The war started in April 1861 and the child would’ve been under a year old.  During that era, I believe that a child that age would be more vulnerable to illnesses and so it’s wouldn’t surprise me if they died before the next census.  Jesse’s older brothers, Franklin and Ruffin were a little older, but I still feel would’ve been susceptible to the same childhood illnesses.  I think that the other children survived because they were older.  Mary Jane was about 35 in 1860 and was of childbearing age so it’s possible that she may have died during childbirth or from complications afterwards. 

If that happened, then perhaps it’s more likely that John W. would’ve had a photograph taken of his wife Caroline before he went off to work in Nashville.  Perhaps he regretted what happened when he left his first wife and their kids behind during the Civil War and wanted something to remember her by.  So maybe that tintype I have of the lady is really Rhoda Caroline Richardson Womble after all.

The other issue that I have with the information about her half-siblings and her dad’s 1^st wife is that some of the names are wrong.  I may be wrong in my own data on this family, but it’s my understanding that the children that John W. had with his first wife are:

Joab

Ellen

Adolphes Winfield

Martha

Tranquilla Blanche

Franklin

Ruffin

Jesse

It’s perfectly understandable to me that the names Joe, Mattie, and Blanche may be nicknames for Joab, Martha, and Tranquilla respectively.  However, it makes no sense that she would refer to Adolphes Winfield as Winifred, unless it’s a typo.  Maude also refers to John W.’s 1^st wife as Jane when I’ve typically seen her name as Mary Jane, but then I’m probably being nitpicky. 

The birth information about Maude’s mother may most likely be accurate.  The family would have celebrated her birthday and she probably knew what year her mother was born in and the general area.  It’s possible from the vagueness of the birth location of her mother that Caroline really did move away from Indiana when she was young and so didn’t know the town or didn’t remember.

The story about the family Bible being lost in a tornado is possible.  This varies from the story I had heard that it was lost in a flood and I just assumed it was destroyed in one of the floods that Paducah had.

Maude states information about her grandfather, John Womble’s Revolutionary War experiences and injuries he sustained during those years.  She also makes mention of some of his children and a person named Josephine, who she believes was his daughter. 

There is absolutely no way that Maude could know anything about her grandfather’s experiences during the Revolutionary War or injuries that he had from his service.  This information wouldn’t have come from her grandfather because he died in 1820 and she wasn’t born until the late 1860’s.  She must have heard these things from her father, John W.  However, I even wonder just how accurate that information would’ve been.  John W. was born to his father when his dad was quite old.  Not only that, but his father died when he was about 5 years old.  Granted he would’ve been around his father every day, so it’s possible that he would remember things his dad told him about his life.  I still find this rather unlikely.  In my own life, I have only vague memories of people that I knew when I was that young and I certainly wouldn’t have paid much attention if they told me about their war experiences.  It’s my belief that John W. didn’t know his father very well and only had a few memories of him.  The information he may have had would’ve come from his mother and siblings who knew his father for a longer period of time.  I don’t know how accurate that information would’ve been coming from his mother or siblings to John W. and then to his children. 

The last bit of information mentioned is that she states that she has a certified copy of a land grant for her grandfather’s service in the Revolutionary War.  I don’t know if I should believe this or not.  The reason being is that John Womble sold his bounty land to a William Anderson in 1799, Anderson did sell the land back to John Womble, and later John said that he never received the deed back when he petitioned Anderson’s daughters later.  While it’s possible that Maude could’ve obtained such a document, since she lived in the area where this bounty land was located maybe she had better access to the records then someone else that didn’t live there.  However, she says a lot of things in this report she wrote that I find far fetched and unproven.  If she has this certified copy of this grant why didn’t she supply a copy of it with this report that she wrote to the DAR.

The first page of Maude Womble Cudworth’s DAR application from 1934 lists the lineage of her family from herself to her grandfather, John Womble.  I believe the information for her birthplace; even though, I know the family didn’t live in McNairy County, TN because it’s possible that her mother was staying in another town with a relative until she gave birth.  Maude’s father might have been working in Nashville around the time that his wife was due to give birth and a relative may have been the only person around who could’ve been there for her.  I can’t see that her husband would’ve wanted to leave his wife alone in that condition, so he may have seen to it that she was visiting with relatives for an extended period of time. 

Maude would most likely know her father’s birth date because the family would have celebrated that day and she may have known how old he was too.  The marriage date information for her parents isn’t correct.  Their marriage date is actually 18 May 1865.  I think this may be just a typo on Maude’s part because her mother died in November, so I can see that this isn’t really a sign that she has misinformation. 

The information about her grandparents, John and Catherine is less detailed than that for her parents.  Most of the dates could’ve come from or been calculated from her grandfather’s pension application file.  However, I haven’t been able to calculate John’s birth year to 1756 if he’s a 60 year old in 1818 when it seems that the application was written.  It seems to me that he may have been born in 1758 instead of 1756 that appears to be claimed everywhere.  An argument could be made that at the time when John Womble existed people didn’t really know when they were born.  I’m not sure when celebrating birthdays became a regular activity.  It is possible that Maude could’ve gotten some of this information from the pension application, or from her father who may have remembered them.  It makes sense that the death dates are more complete than the birth information since Maude’s father would probably remember when his mother died, but his father’s death may have been a faint memory to him. 

Maude could’ve gotten John Womble’s place of death from the pension file or remembered it from information her father told her.  Again, this may have been something her father remembered about his father.  On the lineage form the birth place for John Womble is N.C., which is interesting because that means he could’ve been born anywhere in the state.

The second page gives an account as to John Womble’s service to the United States during the Revolutionary War.  The only way that Maude could’ve known about these details is either from reading her grandfather’s pension file or remembering details her father told her about her grandfather.  I find it a bit unlikely that her father would remember much about his father.  Although, John W. could’ve told Maude stories about his father that he remembered his siblings or mother telling him. 

The last page of Maude’s DAR application shows a little more information about John Womble’s wives, Unknown and Catherine and the children that he had with them.  Again the marriage information for John marriages is incomplete.  There’s a bit more with his marriage to Catherine, but not much.  Because this information is so incomplete, I think that the source was the pension file.  In the file John’s son, Benjamin F. says that his parents got married in Edgecombe County, NC in 1798, so it must have come from there.  The pension file at NARA makes no mention of another wife that John Womble was married to in the past or other children that he had with another woman.  This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but it does make me wonder why it wasn’t mentioned and what happened with them.  If it did happen how is that Maude knew about this marriage, births of those children and their wives names?  Where did she obtain this information about John’s first wife and his children?

The date of this marriage is 1781 and the location and name of the first wife is unknown.  I’m a bit skeptical of this first marriage because I haven’t found any information to support it happening and I think the date comes to close to John’s service in the Revolutionary War.  In his pension application, John says that in 1780 he helped in defending Charleston when it was under British attack.  He was captured and while held by the British met a Doctor Lee.  The doctor concocted a story that John was his servant and the two were paroled together.  John traveled with the doctor to Washington, NC where they split up and John spent the remainder of the war on the banks of the Tar River.  The Tar River begins near Washington, NC, so it’s possible that John stayed in that area or traveled up river to Tarboro where it appears he lived near from 1798 until his death around 1820.  I don’t see how John could’ve gone through all of this and been able to get married so soon after his ordeal with the British, unless of course he knew the woman beforehand.  According to the pension file on John Womble, he enlisted in Halifax, NC.  This city is some distance from Tarboro, so it seems unlikely that he would’ve been familiar with it.

According to the application, John and his first wife had three sons, Thomas born in 1783, William born in 1785, and John born in 1788.  The older sons both married.  Thomas married a woman named Eliza Gray and William’s wife was named Drusilla. 

Again, I’m skeptical of this information because it doesn’t jive with the information that I have on John Womble.  I don’t know what happened to John’s first wife, but if she died soon after the birth of their son John in 1788 it would have left him free to marry Catherine in 1798.  I did find a John Wombel listed in the 1790 Federal Census for Edgecombe County, NC.  He is the only person listed in his household.  If this is my John Womble then where are his children or is this just a person with a similar name?  If my John Womble had been married before he married Catherine then he would’ve had two or maybe three children ranging in age from 15 to 10.  There aren’t any additional people listed in their household in the 1800 census, so that’s why I question whether or not these children are really his.  It is possible that if his wife died that he sent the children to live with a relative.  This would explain why they’re not listed as living with him in the 1790 and 1800 census.

Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend Projects

The Thanksgiving Holiday is typically spent eating too much and then going out in the wee hours of Friday morning (or in the case of this year late Thursday night) for some Black Friday shopping for loved ones' Christmas presents.

This year I spent the holiday eating too much, and decided to avoid the Black Friday and after Thanksgiving Day sales to work on some much neglected craft projects.

The first project isn't really something that's been neglected, but was pretty crucial to my knitting world. At the Tuesday before Thanksgiving stitching session with my knitting group I ran out of the pink yarn that I had been knitting my pink and black bathmat with. I vowed inwardly to find some pink yarn soon because I didn't want a UFO floating over me, and the bathmat is something that I kept mentioning to my husband that I would make.

On Wednesday night my husband and I drove around to the various craft stores searching for the perfect shade of pink yarn to match what I had been using to make the bathmat. Unfortunately, that shade of pink has been discontinued. I'm sure the yarn could've been found at one of the local yarn shops in my area, but I really just want something very inexpensive for my bathmat because after all-it's a bathmat. I found an acceptable shade of pink yarn at the local Michael's and I think it's turning out to be a decent choice even though it's a bit more slippery than the original yarn I had been using.

Whenever a long holiday weekend approaches I think about how I would like to spend the time. Various ideas flit through my mind. I spent part of Thanksgiving Day knitting the bathmat between meal preparations and knew that I didn't want to spend the whole weekend working on that project no matter how noble that would be.

I have papers and other memorabilia from my great grandfather that I had been going through and documenting my findings, but I learned last weekend that I could only sit and go through the things for a short period of time-so that project will have to sit on the shelf for awhile.

I started embroidering a miniature rug for one of my dollhouses some years ago. This project made it onto my list of New Years Resolutions for next year, but I've considered taking it up again just because it's been sitting idle for so long.

While installing the tile bathroom floor I made in another dollhouse I found and repaired several electrical problems in the house. One of the electrical problems has remained. I considered fixing it over the weekend.

Then there's the miniature diner that I'm making. I made some progress on the project some years ago, but this too has gone unfinished.

I also have another miniature rug that is in the planning stages. This is a life-sized 'Tapestry' needlepointed rug from an old craft magazine that I plan to scale down to 1/12th the size and make it for one of my dollhouses.

After discussing my dilemma with my husband who put them in perspective by saying that some of them were fairly small and others were large ongoing projects. His suggestion was to work on the diner.

I worked a bit on the diner. I made a pattern for the diner's floor, but because I'm lacking the correctly sized piece of thin cardboard, I didn't get much farther with that portion of it. So I moved on to making the diner's furniture. This mainly involved gluing and then as anyone who has done much crafting or miniature work, there isn't much to do with the project until the glue dries. It's sort of akin to genealogy or blocking knitting. You can order a document or you can block a knitted object, but once those tasks are done you can only sit back and wait either until the document arrives or the knitting dries.

While waiting for the glue to dry on my diner, I decided to work a bit on scaling down the rug I was planning. I have a wonderful cross-stitch making program called Pattern Maker. I spent the better part of the day drawing the rug's pattern into my program. I was able to utilize many functions in the program that I didn't know existed. This helped me to recreate the rug. I still couldn't get the size down to something that I could use, but resolved to rework the pattern again on the morrow.

The next day, my thoughts returned to the rug that I had started long ago. I had made a partial pattern for it on paper and because I had been so pleased with my cross-stitch pattern making software I decided to recreate the pattern on my computer.

By using the software I was able to create a pattern for it. The size is a bit smaller than I had originally planned, but I think it will still work for its intended room.

While eating lunch I went through the number of stitches for each portion of the 'Tapestry' rug. I came up with a configuration of the center motif being repeated six times in a 2x3 configuration and then surrounding that with the rest of the appropriately proportioned borders. This hasn't been finished and so far I think the rug may still be too large for the room that I'm designing it for.

Embroidery Database

I use Access frequently in my current job.  I didn’t know much about it before, other than it was a database program.  I’m the sort of person who learns best by doing a particular thing instead of just reading about it.  It must have something to do with being a visual learner.  I wanted to improve my Access skills and tried to read books on it, but each time I would begin a book on Access my thoughts would flit towards actually creating a database.

Finally, I decided that the best way to learn about Access was to use it while creating my own database.  I’m also a Ravelry user and have been very impressed with their knitting social network/database set-up.  I also use Stitcherie, it’s a great place to post images of my needlework projects, but is seriously lacking in helping me organize and keep track of my embroidery projects, patterns, and supplies. 

Since I may never find an embroidery-geared site such that Ravelry is for knitters, I decided to create my own embroidery database in Access.  I started by making a list of things that I wanted to include and how it needed to be organized.

So far, there are 24 patterns in my database.  Some of the patterns are ones that I’ve completed.  The patterns range from simplistic needlepoint, crewelwork, to counted cross-stitch.  I’ve accumulated many embroidery patterns and kits over the years.  Some of these I’ve made and given away to family members.  My initial major embroidery purchase was three patterns that I planned to make and give to my mother and two sisters.  I still need to complete the last one, to my eldest sister.

The database is far from being finished and as I work on it, I keep finding or thinking of different things to add to it.  Creating the database has helped me to categorize my embroidery stuff in a way that I hadn’t really thought of it. 

Before starting this project, I hadn’t really thought of embroidery floss or beads as just being a general item.  It was always in my mind fairly synonymous with DMC or Mill Hill.  To think of it in a more general sense and then to sort by company, color number and name actually made more sense.

The analogy I that formed in my mind was if you took a picture and you basically broke it into pieces and put each of those pieces into different categories.

I don’t think that this database will ever rival Ravelry, but I can see a definite use for it in today’s online world.  Even if this database doesn’t lead me to making something on the same level as Ravelry, at least the idea is out there for someone else to pick up and run with it.

Knitting Projects

I'm a self-taught knitter who started knitting 15 years ago. My favorite knitting project is typically a sweater. They tend to take me a little over a year to complete, so I've only made 5 sweaters since I started. Most of my yarn time has been taken up crocheting the afghan that I previously blogged about.

Now that I think about it technically I've knitted 6 sweaters, but that one I was more a failed experiment in customizing fit than a sweater. The plan is to frog the sweater and start over.

Now that the afghan that I had been working on for so long is complete, I can go back to knit other things that I'd been putting off. During the course of my intense knitting period before I took on the task of crocheting an afghan, I had accumulated a fairly sizeable yarn stash. I really didn't want to become a person who had a bunch of yarn, but never did anything with it, 'cause that's just not healthy in my opinion!

While still working on the afghan at times I took time away from it to knit up sweaters that I had purchased yarn for before buying the yarn for the afghan. Once I finished these sweaters, I decided that I wouldn't buy any more yarn until the afghan was finished. I was somewhat successful with this plan. Other people occasionally gave me yarn as a gift, which was nice, but most knitters will agree that the yarn that you receive as a gift isn't of too high a quality. One Christmas, I did get a local craft store's gift card from my husband. At that time, that particular craft store sold what I thought was pretty decent quality yarn for that type of big box store. I bought some wonderful black cashmere/wool blend yarn with it that I planned to knit into a pair of gloves when the afghan was done.

I finally finished the afghan this fall and soon after began knitting on my gloves. The gloves took me about a month to make and I hadn't ever made anything like that before, so it was a big change for me. Normally, I'm knitting a sweater that has some sort of pattern to it like cables or something, so I constantly have to keep track of where I am in the pattern. The result is a wonderful looking garment, but the knitting experience is one that requires my full attention.

Knitting the gloves required attention, but it seemed pretty minimal. It was a great experience creating something so useful as gloves. While knitting them, I thought about what to make next. My husband had brought up the idea of knitting a cover for my stand mixer; even though, that already has a store bought cover. The idea came to me to make covers for the other small appliances that we have. I considered making covers for our toaster and bread machine, but then I thought of something else that we needed more.

Years ago my husband and I had bought a towel type of bathmat. It was great when it was new, but had slowly deteriorated into a rag. At last, it was relegated to our ragbag. Neither of us wanted to spend the money on getting another bathmat, so we've been using a towel as an ersatz bathmat.
After finishing the gloves, I began knitting a bathmat. I found a pattern for an entrelac dishcloth done in a garter stitch on Ravelry. Someone had modified the pattern and made a bathmat out of it. I had wanted to use the yarn that I had left over from the afghan in another project such as granny square afghan, but decided that I wanted a break from afghans. I felt that knitting the bathmat from yarn left over from the afghan was a good compromise and set my mind on that.

My bathroom has pink and black tiles in it. I had a what I felt was a decent amount of cotton pink yarn left over from the previous project and I had pretty much a full skein of acrylic black yarn. I thought about making the bathmat with black triangles around the outside and pink squares in the middle.

I wasn't sure if I had enough pink yarn, so I measured it and decided to alternate black squares on every other row. The modified pattern on Ravelry has the bathmat size as 16.5" x 30". 16.5" seemed too narrow for me, so I measured our ersatz bathmat and came up with 25" x 30" as the size for my bathmat. I knitted a swatch to come up with the stitches per inch and how many stitches to cast on.

I had looked around for patterns for small appliance covers, but came up with nothing I liked. What I'll probably do is measure each of the small appliances that I want to make covers for and then knit up swatches in the yarn I choose. I plan to knit the covers with yarn that people gave me as gifts. I think this would be a good use for it, since I probably won't use it for anything else.

However, I still think about trying to recreate an old stocking cap that I used to own. I used to wear it when I was in grade school. I had found it one winter in our family's box of winter clothes. No one claimed it and I guess it must have been given to us by some family friend whose child had out grown it or just didn't want it anymore. I had loved this hat; even though, I got alot of grief from my siblings for wearing it. I was in the 4th grade when I used to wear it and would soon be moving on to the middle school. My siblings kept warning me that I should give up the hat when I started riding the bus with them to attend middle school because it would make me a target of ridicule.

Of course, I refused and their warnings only made me decide to wear the hat for a long, long time. This was not to be and during the winter I lost the hat and never found it again. Our family moved away from that town and I never moved on to that middle school and instead just went to another grade school.

Years later one of my sisters confessed that she and my brother took the stocking hat from my coat pocket while we eating out and they buried it outside beneath the snow. I had always wondered what had happened to the hat and now I knew. Surprisingly, I wasn't mad at them, but I still longed to have another hat just like it. Making this hat might be a good use of the spare yarn that I have.

Completing Those Pesky New Year's Resolutions

At the start of this year I made a list of resolutions for the New Year. My intention was to complete many projects that I had started years ago and never finished and to include some things that had been recommended to me by my doctor. I even made a list of things to do in January that were of special importance to me to do. I listed out 10 items on the list for the year and so far have completed half of them.

One of my major goals was to finish the NGS Home Study Genealogy course that I had begun back in August of 2009. By the beginning of this year I had only one lesson to complete on the second of the three CDs that make up the course. My goal was to finish the course in 2011. Finishing the last lesson on CD 2 was my top goal in January 2011. In August of this year I completed the course.

Years ago I had started crocheting an afghan. In 2010, I finished crocheting the strips of the afghan, and had started embroidering them. I wasn't making much progress because of the many other irons that I had in the fire. My goal had been to finish the afghan by the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I joined a knitting group that met once a week where I could work on the afghan at least once a week. Attending their weekly knit-ins really helped keep me on track with my goal. However I didn't finish it by my goal date, I did complete it in early October.

With the afghan complete, I could start finishing up my next project-tiling the bathroom floor of one of my dollhouses. I don't know of any miniature groups in my area, so I couldn't turn to really anyone else but myself in staying motivated. Thankfully, I had progressed enough with making the tiles that I just needed to finish cutting a slew of paint sample cards into tiny squares. I had started by cutting them into 1/4" strips and was in the process of cutting those strips into 1/4" squares. I spent a couple of weeks listening to music on my iPod while cutting the 'tile' strips into squares. As I got closer to finishing with the cutting, I got more and more motivated by the project. Once I had all the paint sample cards cut into tiny squares I began gluing each one to the floor that I had made for the bathroom of the house. It took me a week to complete the gluing process and in a couple more days I installed the floor in the dollhouse.

At the end of 2010 my former boss at Once Upon A Time, Aniene Porter passed away and all I could think about when I heard the news was all of the wonderful stories that she used to tell me about her life. Writing down all of the stories is still a goal for me and hopefully I'll get to it before the close of 2011. If not, this will be put on next years resolutions list.

Aside from my miniature, genealogy, and knitting hobbies, I also do embroidery. I had worked at organizing my embroidery materials. It's fairly organized, because there are no longer skeins of embroidery floss in bags in my closet. Now these are mostly organized into binders. I wish that I could've come up with something better, but I wanted a fairly inexpensive solution to my problem. Organizing my floss, fabric, and patterns is still an ongoing project and will hopefully be soon finished.

I've already started on a list for next year and so far have 6 items. Hopefully, these will be completed in a timelier manner than this year's resolutions.

A Smaller Scale Universe

I’m starting to think that I’m the only one who’s using the mini nook site. I’ve posted photos of my projects and information on them. I even posted my own blog post to the site’s blog feature, which almost seems like a non-feature because the insert photos function doesn’t work properly. It’s possible that I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t think that a site should be that user-unfriendly. After posting to their blog, I received comments on my post but they were spam in three different languages. I think this needs to be fixed. I guess that I should mention it to TPTB who run the site.

The photo album function on the site is horrible because the file size limits on the uploaded images are too constraining. Also, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but you can’t change the order of the photos in the albums, which isn’t good. I like having a place to share what I’m doing with that hobby, but I wish that I felt that I was at least communing with others who share the same interest.

I’m contemplating submitting an article based on my post about my bathroom floor project to a miniature magazine. If this happens it will probably be to one that I can submit to via email.

Maybe this whole single hobby centric social networking is actually in its infancy with some hobbies and I’ve basically entered into it at the ground floor level and that’s why I have that sole contributor’s feeling. It’s quite possible that dollhouse manufacturers or the mail order miniature companies may have some small social networking feature on their sites and I should investigate this.

It could be that the people who are interested in this hobby aren’t people who use the internet to network with others. Genealogists, stitchers, and knitters have been using the internet for years due to sites such as Ancestry.com, the Usenet group RCTN, and I’m sure before Ravelry that there was one for knitting and crocheting.

I saw online that there’s a site being developed called MeeNeeMe for those interested in miniatures. This sounds interesting and hopefully will be popular. You can subscribe to their newsletter and will presumably get updates and an invite when their social networking universe is up and running. Again, I’m not sure how popular a social networking site would be with miniaturists, but the world is changing and becoming smaller every day. I wouldn’t think that a site such as Ravelry would be such a big hit with the yarn crowd, but it’s wonderful and is quite popular as well as useful to the yarn enthusiast. The smart thing for the MeeNeeMee.com people to do is to publicize what they’re working on in miniature magazines and organizations such as NAME (National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts). 

Bathroom Floor

Several years ago I came up with the idea to tile the bathroom floor of the Lily house.  I decided to use cut-up pieces of paint sample cards for the tiles.  You can purchase dollhouse-sized tiles to use but I wanted to try a more economical method.  I took a wallpaper sample with me to my local Home Depot to help me choose which color to get.  I picked out six different colors to use to make tiles.  Each set of three colors were different shades of pink and green.  I took several sheets of each color to cut into tiles. 

Once I had the paint sample sheets I began to make the floor.  I chose a thin sheet of cardboard to use as the floor.  I made a pattern by first laying the sticky side of contact paper onto the bathroom floor of the dollhouse and cutting it to size with an X-acto knife.  I then pulled up the contact paper off the floor and stuck it onto brown wrapping paper. After making sure that the contact paper was stuck smoothly to the paper, I cut away the excess paper and was left with a pattern to use to cut the cardboard to the correct size.  I put the pattern on the cardboard I had chosen to use as the floor and drew around the outside edge of it with a pen.  I lifted off the pattern and then cut around the lines with scissors.  Once the floor was cut out, I tested it in the bathroom to check the fit.  The cardboard fit and then I painted it with several coats of white acrylic paint.  The white paint on the cardboard was going to be the tile grout. 

Then I began the arduous task of cutting the paint sample cards into tiles.  Each card had the color number and name printed on it.  This made part of the card unusable, so I didn’t cut those parts into squares.  I saved the names of the paint samples in case I found later that I would need more.  Each paint sample card had it’s own Ziploc bag.  Also when the paint dried on the floor I put that into a large Ziploc bag to keep it protected. 

As it turned out it was a good thing that I did that I put the floor into the bag because this project took very long to complete.  I started out by first cutting the paint samples on a self-healing cutting mat into thin strips that were ¼” wide using an X-acto knife.  When this was completed I then cut the strips into ¼” squares.  This was a tedious process and I found could only be done in small segments at a time due to the fact that it required me to sit still and make repeated cutting movements.  Finally in 2011, I finished cutting the paint sample cards and was ready to start gluing them onto the white painted cardboard floor once I had come up with a pattern.  I spent some time playing around with colored pencils testing out different color patterns on graph paper.  After awhile, I came up with a good pattern idea. 

Using the pattern I had made on graph paper as a guide I began gluing the paint sample tiles to the floor being careful to allow some of the white to show between the tiles.  I used the Easy Flow Tacky glue for my glue and thinned it out on the cardboard using a plastic card saved just for this purpose.  It took about a week for me to finish gluing all the tiles to the cardboard.  The floor tiles weren’t perfectly aligned, but they didn’t look terrible.  Looking at my own bathroom floor I could see imperfections in it and so I was satisfied with my work on this floor.  Thankfully, I had gotten enough tiles so I didn’t need to get any more paint sample cards.  To fill in blank spaces at the ends instead of cutting the tiles to fit into these empty spaces, I glued larger tiles to fill the space and let the excess of the tile overhang the floor.  Once those parts were filled in, I set the floor aside to dry completely.  When it was dried I turned the floor over and using scissors cut away the excess tile so that it was flush with the outside edge of the floor.

 

When the floor was completely tiled, I tested the fit in the dollhouse bathroom.  I was happy with the fit and tested out how it would look with the furniture in it by putting the sink, bathtub, and screen in the room.  To ensure that the tiles would stay glued to the floor, I decided to paint it with clear acrylic varnish.  I had done the same thing with the kitchen floor and was pleased with the results.  I painted the floor with two coats of the clear acrylic varnish. 

When the varnish was dry, I cleaned the bathroom floor with Endust as a way to remove the dust and any dirt that might be there.  Then squeezed a bead Easy Flow Tacky glue onto the floor.  I spread the bead glue into a thin glue layer with a plastic card and then put the tiled floor on top of the glue.  I pressed the floor firmly into place and covered it with waxed paper to protect it was being marred by anything during the drying process.  Then weighted the floor down with small books, a dumbbell, and a small brick. 

 

I let it dry overnight and the next day, removed the objects weighting the floor down and the waxed paper and then needed to move the furniture and other accessories into the bathroom.