Hallow'een evening was spent having dinner with friends in a converted country church complete with cemetery!
Actually, the church is a family home which is filled to the rafters - literally - with dolls of all kinds, ethnicities, sizes, shapes, fabrics, breeds, antique or not - they are all now loved and displayed in all the rooms of this unique home. Dolls line the staircases, they fill the beds, they have their own miniature church pew, there is an antique wicker perambulator with parasol which is filled with dolls, an antique crib overflowing with dolls, the landing is lined with dolls of all sizes, all standing at attention - more dolls are holding open doors to the other bedrooms upstairs, a double bedded guest room is filled with dolls from the threshold to the headboard - a sea of doll faces all looking towards the door - at least a 1000 of them - if someone wanted a doll from the bed, others would be crushed underfoot to reach it! The one-time boys' bedroom which contains 2 single beds is filled with stuffed toys, cabbage patch dolls, ornamental dolls, talking animals, toys for the dolls, and the list goes on, It would take a month of Sundays to look at each item individually. I did notice 2 Owls amongst various arrangements - one in the boys' room and another on a shelf in the front hallway.
The couple who live amongst these dolls have collected antiques for many years and any table or chair which does not have a doll collection arranged on it, is covered with a collection of another kind: cranberry glass, period lamps, crystal, china, decorative plates surround the room known as the 'dining room' - we lost count at
36 on the plate rail facing us! The dining table with would seat at least 12 comfortably (5 granddaughters plus 6 adults for family occasions) is always fully set out for formal dining - after our meal, the husband washed the dishes and cleared the table and as we left for home, all the washed pieces were sorted on the kitchen table ready to be replaced again in the dining room.To put all this on topic, I was asked by the couple about my current projects (I have done several items for them in the past including the Nativity wall hanging which was the inspiration for the much bigger Navan Church Quilt) - I was shown a panel for a wallhanging and asked if I would quilt it for them - it is called "Bird Sanctuary" by Rosemary Millette of Springs Creative Products (5 images of various birds with arrangements of fruits-apples, plums, pears, red grapes and green grapes) - it will be interesting to bring these birds to life.
The cemetery is real and is in use, I noticed that there were fresh flowers on several of the markers - all of them have been polished and cared for by the homeowners over the years - not a stray leaf was in sight in the cemetery - the church steeple is in need of a fresh paint job but they are waiting now for the spring weather to arrive and their now-adult sons to organize the required ladders and scaffolding to complete that job.
It was definitely an interesting Hallow'een evening. jennellh