Doll

Here are the other 9-

Some good stuff has been happening lately.

On Sunday, Mary, of A Saloia fame, came over to see me. She is with her family in the Boston area and so we were able to meet up. We sat around in my studio, looking at fabric, chatting about doll-making and blogs, among other things. Then we wandered down the street and went to my corner fabric store where we each managed to find something we “needed”. Now I have some pretty fabric bits that will remind me of our afternoon together when I use them.

I have finished up my atc’s for Kirsten’s Bird atc swap. I made 10 and 6 will be sent off to Minneapolis. I still need to make the little envelopes. They are always fun.

On Tuesday, I was the very grateful recipient of a treasure trove of embroidery threads- Mostly wool (about 200! skeins) but also some wonderful embroidery thread called Danish Flower Thread. It is a matte, vegetable-dyed thread (I don’t know if that is the right word?) in beautiful soft colors. I love sewing with it. Lucky, lucky me!

And lastly, one of the reasons I’ve been doing postcards recently , is that I have several friends who have been ill and need them. I went to see my friend in the hospital today. She was so much better then I was expecting and I can tell you, I am very relieved. I was so happy to be able to give her this card-

Now I have to do the other 9 and make another series!

10 postcards- house series, 2. boyfriend 5, 3. boyfriend 4, 4. all the boyfriends, 5. boyfriend 3, 6. big man 7- boyfriend 2, 7. postcard- beach lady, 8. postcard- girl with flowers, 9. postcard- lady with bird, 10. postcard- house, 11. postcard- pink girl, 12. postcard- rain girl, 13. night cat postcard, 14. trees postcards, 15. topiary postcards, 16. big man- boyfriend, 17. hydrangea 4, 18. hydrangea 3, 19. hydrangea 2, 20. hydrangea, 21. ff9- granny fairy, 22. ff8, 23. ff7 face, 24. fat fairy 7, 25. fat fairy 6- spring September on flickr.

Great idea Hanna!

This is what I was talking about here- the last paragraph about doing sets. Ten postcards, house with window, a face in the window. The same, but all different. This way works better for me, I think.

I really need to find the manual for my camera and figure out how to adjust the setting so that the night postcards will not come out over-exposed. I hate seeing the rich colors and face details wash out… but I have an overwhelming need to post them anyway!

I will put them up in my etsy shop later- I am still thinking about/working with them now.

this one is washed out- my camera would not cooperate.

so here is a close-up. You can sort of see the stitching on the moon.

I’ve got some more Boyfriend dolls in the works. And I want to do more of these postcards- figure out how I want to approach doing them. I usually don’t work on two separate ideas at the same time, but somehow both of these projects have got my focus right now.

I’ve finished 4 so far- 2 trees

and 2 topiary

I have some problems with the stitching puckering the fabric- sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t-

this is what I am using inside these postcards. It is great- very firm and iron-on adhesive on both sides.

I should do sets of these cards- 10 (or some other random number) of each design at a time. Then I could concentrate on color, stitching and fabric work instead of trying to make each one completely different. As I was making such a big mess the other day, I was thinking that I was approaching this project all wrong. Somehow I was trying to start from a detail (my little sketches) and work out instead of having an image/ composition that I would be working toward.

I am working on postcards now. But there has been so many steps between the intention and the end product! I spent a lot of last weekend, cleaning up in my studio. A friend was suppose to come for a visit and I realized it was so bad that 2 people could hardly fit in the room together, let alone actually sit down and visit. So- step one, find the floor-

well, you can see I’ve already started to lay out new projects in that picture.
Step 2- cut out the sketches from my fabric sketchbook. I washed them because I used a water soluble chalk pencil on some of them. Here they are, drying on the edge of the bathtub-

Oh No! Now the floor is completely covered again!

I worked on the floor for a day- boy, was I sorry though. My back was killing me by evening. The next morning I cleared off a table (i.e. piled everything up on top of any other clear surface) and layed the project out so that I could sit at my chair and also have decent light.

ah, much better. And here we are today-

the floor is not too bad- at least I can move around and find stuff… Hopefully I’ll be able to show some finished postcards in the next few days.

One of the people in my doll club, brought this book, Kokoro no Te by Kumiko Sudo, to show us. I ended up buying myself a copy- it is fantastic! It has some inspired sewing kits- I might have to try making one, instead of just admiring the beautiful photos.

I finished the postcards. They are all in the range of 4 inches by 6 inches.

oops- this tree one doesn’t actually have that white thread mess on it…

I thought the doily could look like a wicker chair-

I really like how the tree came out on this house one- I’ll have to play with that imagery some more-

I will put these into my etsy shop when I get back from NIADA. I don’t want to worry about not mailing them when I’m away. They will be $20 each, in case you wanted to know…