My Dream Home in Miniature | I made a tiny armchair completely by hand

I made it all from scratch. Determined to get good at this. Oh my goodness, that was so fiddly. How much better is that? Hello, hi, it's Jess. I recently acquired the most beautiful Tudor-style dollhouse, and I am slowly but surely transforming it into the home of my dreams in miniature. The same way I'd take on any restoration or interior design project, I am working on it bit by bit, room by room, and I am excited to take you along for the journey. Hello, hi, and welcome back. I am very excited. A little bit nervous for some reason, because today I am going to be attempting to make my first piece of upholstered furniture. So we're leveling up, or trying to. I mean, technically you could count my window seat as a piece of upholstered furniture, but I feel like that was cheating because I essentially just cut a bit of an existing mattress and glued some fabric around it. This is a bit more of a challenge. So I'm imagining a very traditional winged back armchair, and I'm going to be making it out of... If my movements seem somewhat robotic, I have a muscle spasm in my upper back, which is making moving my head somewhat difficult. Anyway, we're going to be making this chair out of some fabric and a cardboard box, and that's pretty much it. I'll probably use something different for the feet of the chair. I haven't thought that far ahead yet, but yeah, this fabric I've had for years. I think I made a sink skirt out of it in my old cottage. Oh, I lied. I'm also going to be using pillow stuffing. So just an old pillow that I can make it nice and padded and full looking, hopefully. So here is the sketch. This is what we hope it will look like. I might make it in paper first, just to check the scale, because I feel like that's always a good idea. Do like a paper template, put it against the bookcase, because I'm imagining this living in the living room. Living in the living room? It's part of my library-esque living room. I think that's pretty good, size-wise. Let's show you against the bookcase. So it will have legs and padding and arms, but yeah, I think that's good. This is all a different layout now, because I knocked it over yesterday and everything fell off. So I'm going to be using this to make the bed. A couple of people mentioned getting this stuff called museum wax, I think it's called, which I'm definitely going to get some. Basically means you can temporarily stick things down so it doesn't fall off all over the place without damaging it. And so yeah, definitely going to look into getting that, because that bookcase is extremely precarious. Yeah, I could have done more on this paper one, but I really just wanted to check the size. So I'm just going to go, I'm just going to dive right in and just start making the chair. And we will problem solve as we move along. I feel like that's the best way to do it. So I decided to use cardboard instead of wood for this little build. I figured as long as it was sturdy enough, it would be fine. And it is much easier to cut and also much cheaper. I went into this almost completely blind in that with other miniatures I've made, I've watched other tutorials and did my research. But for this, I just sort of figured it out as I went along, which wouldn't necessarily recommend. Once the back of the chair was sorted, I then moved on to the arms. This was the bit I was nervous about because I wasn't sure if my plan would work, but essentially I free handed the design, then used that as a stencil to cut out three extra pieces so that I had four in total. I'm not really sure why I glued the stuffing on here. I think maybe I should have done the same thing that I did with the back where I glued three of the sides and then just stuffed it in and then glued the last piece. But then because it is such an awkward shape, maybe that wouldn't have worked. We're learning as we go. If you would like to follow along on this learning journey with me, feel free to subscribe and hit the bell button so you never miss a video. That was so fiddly. My fingers are absolutely covered in glue and bits of fluff. So I have the back piece, the seat and the arms, which will together make a chair. I do need to make a, I wanna make a super squashy seat cushion and I do need a chair cushion. Another back piece to hide. It's like, to be honest, even though it's very messy, I do think it's gonna look cool. And I've had an idea for the arms of the chair because I want them to be round like the chair behind me. So with cardboard, obviously if you peel off the top layer, it's much more bendy. So I'm going to cut a piece to size. I think this is a bit short, that round sort of shape. And then that can be the arms. The trick will be finding a way to make that blend in seamlessly. Not sure if that's possible. But yeah, I'm pleased with the progress that I am making. Okay, this bit was actually quite satisfying. Seeing it all fit together and actually start to resemble a chair. That is my favorite part of these little builds. I've now moved on to the arms of the chair. And as I said, I cut some card to size, peeled off the top layer to make it more flexible, and then cut out some fabric slightly bigger and then glued the sides over to give it a nice, neat edge. And then I just glued it all into place. It ended up being quite easy to do, which was a pleasant surprise. Finally, I cut out some little feet using some 5mm strips of balsa wood and super glued them into place. I did it! Thank you, Steve. Thank you. I borrowed a cushion from the bedroom in my dollhouse just to see what it would look like. But I am pleased with myself. I will say that. I don't want to put myself down. However, I think I made exactly the same mistake I did last week and it's too big. It's too big. But, I mean, outside of the dollhouse, it looks okay. And even next to the bookcase. What do you reckon, Steve? But the way I'm treating everything I build, especially if it's the first time I'm doing it, it's almost like a practice run. I've got to give myself some credit here. I've never built an armchair before. So I've learned a lot. I've learned that I need to purchase some more glue. I need to plan how I'm going to cut the fabric ahead of time just to save myself the hassle of it all being lumpy and annoying and getting stuck to my fingers. And when I am measuring things, like designing it, I need to make it about 10% smaller than I think I need to. Eyeballing it is not good enough because that is not the same size. Just don't take into consideration that it is three-dimensional and there is padding and other things that make it appear bigger. But all that being said, I love it. And even if, again, this one doesn't end up in the dollhouse, I will have this on display because I'm proud of it. I made it all from scratch. Unfortunately, that is all I have time for this week on the dollhouse. But next week, I am planning to go back into the kitchen and I would like to complete it. So we'll see how that goes. But if you are new here or if you haven't already, I'd love it if you could subscribe. I do upload new videos every week. Hope you guys are enjoying the start of spring and I'll see you very soon. Bye.