Cassidy Creations cottage bed bash

After putting all the furniture back in the Queen Anne Rowhouse, I decided to change some rooms. This is what I had planned for the upstairs bedroom.

The hand-painted washstand and blanket chest are Bauder Pine. The rest of the furniture is a scratch built set that I bought off eBay, and not very nice. (I bought it because it came with a beautiful crocheted granny square afghan — that’s the only thing I really wanted!) I decided to replace the bed, nightstands, and dresser with something classier.

I dug through my box of kits and came up with a Cassidy Creations cottage bed kit. I already made one of these beds for my puzzle house and didn’t want the new one to be exactly the same.

Here are the pieces that come in the kit:

There are supposed to be two scrolled pieces — one for the headboard and one for the footboard — but my baggie only had one, so I decided to use that on the headboard and have a plain footboard. I also wanted to replace the legs, which are made from Tiny Turnings, with something that looked more substantial.

Ignoring the legs for now, I assembled the body of the bed first.

Then I played around with different heights and decided on 1/2″ of space below the bed, with 1/8″ protruding above the bed. The legs are made from 1/8″ square basswood.

Here it is with the Bauder Pine pieces. (Sorry for the awful photo! The light in my dining room is very yellow and the camera just doesn’t know how to deal with it.)

I liked it in theory, but it seemed kind of plain, so I added doodads to the tops of the posts. These are cut off the tops of 1 9/16″ Houseworks spindles. (They seem to have disappeared from Miniatures.com’s website since I bought them, but they’re similar to the 2″ spindles.)

Initially I just glued on the spindles, but they kept wiggling off, so I added cut-down pins similar to how I did the railings in the upstairs stair room.

The “well” that holds the mattress seemed kind of skimpy, so I added taller rails to the sides.

As I was cleaning up for the day, I found the other scrolled piece! It had fallen out of the baggie and into the box that all my furniture kits were stored in. It was too late to add it to the top of the footboard, so I put it on the bottom instead. I’m planning to pair this with a Cassidy Creations bureau, which has similar scrollwork at the bottom.

I painted the bed with a Behr sample paint named Burnished Ivory.

Now comes my least favorite part: making the bedding. I’m just not very good at this. I love a beautifully dressed bed and would happily pay money for one over doing it myself, but they’re not that easy to find in half scale.

I cut a piece of foam to serve as a mattress. In theory the mattress will be totally covered up with bedding, but I didn’t want to take a chance of that mint green showing through anywhere. I tried to cover it with fabric but the green showed through the white cloth, and I got really frustrated trying to figure out how to wrap the fabric around the foam without weird seams. I could feel my blood pressure rising!

Remembering how easy it was to wrap suede scrapbook paper around blocks of wood to make the sofas for the Victorianna, I decided to give that a try instead.

I didn’t have any white suede paper but I had a piece of purpley gray that seemed acceptable. I cut a piece slightly larger than the foam, creased the edges, and cut tabs so the paper would meet up neatly at the corners. (I kind of rushed through this and only have the one fuzzy picture above, but the sofa tutorial goes into more detail about how to fold the paper.)

That looks okay! It’s a little stiff, but it’s not like anyone’s going to be sleeping on this mattress. (In fact, I would have made the mattress out of wood if I had a piece the right size — it would have been much easier to attach fabric to than the foam.)

Skipping ahead a few steps, here’s the bedspread I made. I find needlework very relaxing but I absolutely *hate* to sew, so I can’t say I enjoyed making this, but it turned out okay. I used the sewing machine to hem the edge of the darker fabric and to attach it to the lighter fabric, and glue to attach the bedspread to the mattress.

And here it is with sand-filled pillows. They’re kinda lumpy. Did I mention that I hate to sew?

After all that, I don’t think I’m going to use this bed in here — it doesn’t feel right for this room. Also, now I don’t want to use the Bauder Pine pieces with this bed, because I want to put the blanket chest in front of the bed but that would block the scrollwork. (With the pillows in place you can barely see the scroll on the headboard as it is!) Of course, the great thing about having a zillion dollhouses is that I’ll find a spot for it eventually.

The bed is pictured here with the Victorianna’s changing table, which is made from the same Cassidy Creations kit I’m planning to pair with this bed, so you can see how the scrolls on the two pieces complement each other. Almost like they were meant to go together!