Elizabeth I

It feels like just yesterday that I took Elizabeth I class from Christine Shively. So it is still not too late to post a picture of the doll.  I highly recommend taking a class from Christine. She is a wonderful teacher and has taught me a lot about costuming and face painting.  I have made four or five dolls after I took her class and I can see that her techniques come in very handy while costuming the dolls and I have used those techniques for very one of them. 

The costume is from Elizabethan era with the stomacher and the elaborate ballooning skirt and the huge sleeves. All the edges are beaded. She stands about 9 inches tall which seemed impossible to make before I took the class but now I am a changed person! with changed perspectives in life!!

I chose a darker fabric for the doll body so I could learn to paint a face on a darker fabric.  That was pretty brilliant of me because I did learn to paint a darker face. The color palette is very different for a darker fabric and the highlights are more dramatic.  Wish I had taken more pictures of her from different angles when I first took pictures. Because if I think of taking more pictures, I might take another year to publish this post. :-)

(Blogger has changed so much since I last posted!! No smilies?)

Quilt from 13 Years Ago!

I started making this one about thirteen years ago! The top was done but I did not quilt it. It sat in a box until I took it out a couple of months ago. My daughter bought an aqua blue colored quilt for her bed. Since she has two twins in her room I decided to finish this one for the other bed. The light blues in both quilts are the same color. To make the quilt top a bit bigger I had to buy some more cloth for the borders. I could not get the exact colors but these are close enough. I used dark blue pearl cotton thread for quilting.

That is Biya on the quilt inspecting it. She lived under it while I was quilting. Wonder what she is thinking. Wonder if she thinks in English or Konkani. I talk to her in Konkani which is my mother tongue. Hope she has picked up enough by now.

Amma's Kindle

My amma is an avid reader and loves to read every minute of her spare time. She has lots of other passions like knitting and crocheting but reading is her favorite. I got her a Kindle late last year and started making a case for it. My local quilt store had a 5" charm pack of beautiful batiks. I enjoy those very much and wanted to share them with my mom.

I cut the 5" squares up into little one and a half inch squares and sewed them with one inch wide border of white fabric. I tried not to put same colored fabric pieces next to each other by picking those little squares from a brown paper bag. Inside lining is a cat fabric and I love that fabric too. It is very colorful and I knew my mom will love it. The pattern is mine and I kind of winged it :-). It has been a long time since I quilted and this was a great project to work on.

Doll from Long Long Time Ago

If there is an art that I have perfected, it is the art of procrastination. I think I am really really good at it. This morning I woke up early and decided that it is high time I sat at my computer and posted the picture of the doll from long long time ago(and literally too since it is a vintage style doll) . I made my tea to sip while working on the computer and when I got there, I had to of course check my e-mails and visit my favorite blogs. By this time more than an hour had already past. I had not even gone to Facebook yet. I decided not to. Facebook will have to wait until I post this because we all know how it is when you go to Facebook. This morning I was kind of serious about getting things done here. (I played with the cat, made another cup of tea, and fed my pet beta fish before I got to the next paragraph).

Now for a flash-back: ONE YEAR AND TEN MONTHS AGO.....

(November, 2010) I took Susie McMahon's class at Rose's house. It was the best doll making trip ever! Rose was a perfect host. She gave us room to board, fed us her delicious vegetarian food, and the company was wonderful. There is no parallel to spending time with people with similar interests. I could also spend some time after the class with Susie, my good friend Cindy, and Rose too. Both Cindy and Susie are great musicians and they entertained us after dinner. What a wonderful experience that was.

Susie is a wonderful teacher and is generous with sharing her skills. I picked up a lot of sculpting and painting techniques and have been practising them since then. I finished the class doll sometime last July but did not post her picture on the blog. Here she is with her vintage looking apron and her civil war reproduced fabric dress. Her hair is molded using silk threads and then painted over with acrylics. I remember giving her a name but I don't remember what.

P.S.: It is Emma.

New Projects

About four months ago I sculpted a head for a doll. When I looked at the sculpt, her coy expression reminded me of the girl from Jungle Book. Remember The Jungle Book? Remember the ending? The Walt Disney movie ends when Mowgli smitten by the girl from the man-village follows her into the village. I have named my doll Shanti after the character from the movie. She is work in progress as I have yet to make her hand embroidered skirt, a blouse, and a few accessories.

Fabric for Shanti's skirt. I am working on the hand embroidery.

A few weeks ago, I made this pincushion while watching a movie. I have always wanted to make a huge felted pincushion and here it is! I used felting needle to felt in yellow, orange, red and green colored wool.

My daughter wanted to make one too when she saw me playing with mine. She used pieces of felt sheets we got from the craft store to make some of those blue, mangenta, and purple flowers.

Perennial Flower Garden

My friend from California (who now lives in Idaho) taught me to pick a variety of plants to make mini landscapes in containers. I remember to this day the plants and grasses we had picked about ten years ago to make my first container garden. I look forward to bringing in new plants every year in May to plant them into my terracotta pots. I bought new pots this year since my old ones cracked and chipped in winter. I do love this new shape which makes the creepers drape well. I could not get myself to throw the old ones away so they sit in my perennial garden with some beautiful flower plants in them.

Last year I dug up a little spot in the backyard to make a perennial flower garden. This year some plants reseeded and some just came back. Spring was full of purple and pink flowers and now it is mostly yellows and whites with some oranges and reds in between. I get a variety of birds, bees, butterflies and even humming birds in the garden. Biya has a wonderful time in the mornings watching the window TV Bird Show.

Ondine, The Mermaid

Ondine has been a work in progress for about a year and a half. I took her out from time to time and worked on her for a little while and put her back in the closet. Her body is constructed in layers with sculpting and fiberfill stuffing between layers of "skin". She came together only in the last month or so. The pattern is by Pam Grose. I could not do the face sculpting like Pam shows in the pattern so after three trials I gave up and made a mask for her face. The rest of the pattern is elaborate and had to be worked in stages but well worth the effort. I love the pattern and plan to make one more but in a smaller scale. Ondine is 26 inches wide and 15 inches high and I would like to make her friend about half her size.

When my daughter saw Ondine she begged me to use a couple of clams but I refused :-). Ondine has an equally impressive butt as you can see in last picture. The best part in making her was the beading. I had not worked with beads for quite some time so I was happy that I got a chance to take a whole lot of beads and crystals from my stash and work with them. I love the tail and the fins which I doused with glitter. The tail is poseable and so are the fins.

Our New Cat, Biya

We got a kitten from a local shelter a little over a month ago. Biya is an 11 month old American short hair calico. She is very cute and friendly. She teaches me to enjoy life, to have fun every minute of the day, and to take long naps in the mornings and afternoons :-).

You can find her at our family room window in the morning where she pursues her favorite hobby of bird watching.

First Dolls of the Year....in March!

Ta da.....here are my three Izannah Walker style dolls. Izannah Walker made cloth dolls in late 1800s and was the first to get a patent for a cloth doll. Her dolls have a unique charm with their demure looks, downcast soulful eyes, and little smiles (and oh, I forgot to mention the ugly ears!) When I saw the Izannah Walker dolls for the first time, I fell in love with those beautiful faces. I wondered how fun it would be to make one. Then I found Dixie Redmond's online workshop. I was thrilled to join the workshop and could not wait to make dolls like IW's.

Their heads and the shoulders are sculpted using airdry clay and covered with a cotton knit fabric. Then come layers of gesso and paint before the features are painted on.

Dixie encourages her students to make three dolls together so we won't look for perfection in anyone. I thought it was a great idea. I started making three but finished two together. I waited a little to make the third one. The third one is a little different because I sculpted her after I took a class from Susie Mcmahon. In Susie's class we made a similar doll and I got to incorporate some of those sculpting skills into making my third IW style doll.

I got to take a class from Susie McMahon!! That reminds me to post pictures of the doll I made in her class. I am working on her dress and then she will be done.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!