Another gal finished

She's done! Dressed, wigged, embellished, etc, etc. If you remember, I posted that I didn't make the head right so I was going to do another one. I did. Did all the sculpting, embroidering, etc. I liked it but thought I could do better so I made a third head. Well, she didn't like it - insisted on having the first finished head back . These girls can be so picky, heads and faces, you'd think she was going to a beauty contest. She sure posed for her photos like she was in one!

In case you forgot, this is a Jill Maas pattern called Jude. I stayed true to it and didn't redesign any of it - what a shock! She has two layers of lace on her bodice and arms, which I dyed using Jacquard Dye-na-flow. So much easier to buy white lace and color it myself than trying to find something to match! She's going to my aunt who is having a mastectomy tomorrow. She's a get well present!!!! That's why she is holding a metal tag that says Courage on one side and Hope on the other. I couldn't figure out what to do with the tag - it's too big for a necklace. If you have an idea of what to do with the tag please leave me a comment.

She, she, she ... she doesn't have a name. I'm going to let my Aunt name her. Here is a side view.

The other side. One time I wanted to make a turban for a doll so I looked up how to tye a turban on the Internet. Couldn't figure it out for the life of me! So I emailed Rosie Chapman - whose African dolls usually wear turbans - and asked her how she made them. I was gobsmacked by her answer! She is so innovative - she makes a tube that fits on the dolls head and then twists the material and tacks it down! My tube was eight inches wide and about 45" long - I stuffed it lightly so a little would go a long way!

Back view - not too exciting.

Well, there she is! Glad she's done. I enjoyed making her - the whole felt thing for the face was something new. Plus this was the first time I tried making Ms. Chapman's turban. Now it's time to move on to something else! Unfortunately, that's probably going to be cleaning the house.

Fabric Dyeing Class

Yesterday I went to a fabric dyeing class - and it was a blast! This was the first time I actually used proper dye, not watered down fabric paint! I tried a few different techniques and some came out great and some weren't so hot. Let me tell you (and show you) what I did.

We were using Procion dyes and the teacher had mixed 10 colors up for each of us. She also provided the soda ash solution (which activates the dye and makes it take - I think). Made mixing the colors interesting because she didn't give us just the primary colors - she had made blends.

We started by taking our dye and squirting a few drops into a cup and adding 1/4 cup of water. Then we took our wet fabric (we were using fat quarters) and crinkled it up and stuffed it into a container (like yogurt or margerine ones). Then we poured the dye over the fabric, squished it around, and added 1/4 cup of soda ash solution. This is how that came out. It's okay but not vibrant. I think it's because it was so diluted. We had no idea how much dye to squirt in the cup before we aded the water so it was a guessing game. Because the fabric was all squished and crinkled it gave it that marbled effect. The green one was kind of chartreuse in the cup but it dried to this pukey shade, sigh.

I did the same thing with some white-on-white fabric. The design really stands out. The color was kind of blotchy on these although I don't know why. But they are still neat.

Then we made what the teacher called a parfait. We took three pieces of fabric - squished one up and put it in the bottom of a tall container. I put fuschia dye on it, then squished up another fat quarter and put it on top, added some fuschia with a few drops of violet, then squished up another and added that to the stack with some violet dye. The dye was supposed to run down through the layers.

Enough of that I thought. It was time to try direct dyeing. To do that we had to soak our fabric in the soda ash solution for about an hour before adding the dye - instead of afterwards. Then we just took the dye bottles and squirted the dye right on the fabric. You can get more vibrant colors if you don't screw around like I did, LOL. Look at the photo and then I'll tell you what I did for each one.

Okay - so upper left - I pleated the fabric and then squirted dye on in a random pattern. I used my fingers to try to squish it around but it left blobs in some places. Upper right - the orange one - this one would have been so cool! I pleated it and then used yellows and oranges in circles. It didn't get enough time to dry and I took it home in a plastic bag and the colors ran. It's still pretty though. I'll try this again. Lower left - pleated it again - added a bunch of colors and squished it up. Kind of a fall feeling. Lower right - this one was neat - I twisted the fabric really tightly and then wound it up into a coil. Poured greens and blues on it. After an hour I undid it and there was lots of white, so I took a foam brush and filled in the white streaks with a brilliant green. The corners of this fat quarter are really dark - it's awesome.

Shades of the 60s! Pleated and then dye squirted on in stripes. I sprinkled salt on it to see what it would do but I didn't get the starburst effect. It might have pulled some of the dye to the salt though and that's why the purple and red have lots of white in it. Dunno - would have to do a plain one and a salt one to figure it out.

Well - that's it! I have lots of dye left and another yard or two of fabric so I'll have to try it again in a couple of days. I don't think I'll do the diluted thing again - I liked squeezing it right onto the fabric - brighter colors!

Follow the directions, fool!

I worked a bit more on the curvaceous one today. The arms are done and the boobs are sewn on. Made one head but since the instructions called for me to do something different to what I am accustomed to doing, well, I didn’t do it. So the head didn’t work. She has no cheeks. She looks like an old prune. So I will have to make another one - following the directions this time. Sheesh.

Guess what I did!

You're not going to believe what I did today! It's so amazing! It starts with the letter D.

Yes, I did something other than ATCs! This is from a Jill Maas pattern - isn't her body something else! I love the way it curves, kind of looks like she's pregnant, LOL. You know how everyone elses stuff is better than your stuff? Well, the body fabric is from my friend Heather, I just got it in the mail this week. It's a batik and it's gorgeous. This little puppy is stuffed hard as a rock. Took me nearly an hour just to do the body. It's got about a cup full of shotgun pellets in the bottom to weight it down too. It's heavy! The camera angle makes the arm look really big, it really isn't that big but it is long and it has some of the skinniest fingers I've had to deal with yet. Wasn't fun turning them but I did it! YAY! Thank goodness they are velour rather than cotton. Much more forgiving material. I still have to sew the boobs on, stuff the other arm, and do the head. What's neat about this pattern is there isn't any face painting. The facial features are made of felt and you embroider eyelashes on. I was SO surprised when I realized that. I hope to have it done tomorrow. It's a present for my favorite aunt who has to have a single mastectomy next Tuesday.

Sunflower ATC

Here's a very simple ATC ... background was pieces of a sunflower napkin torn up and glued down, on top of that are various papers and a vintage fruit crate label with mini brads in the corners. Some gold ribbon, copper trim and an iron-on stone finish it off.

Even more ATCs

I have lots of bright cardstock and cutesy papers from when I scrapbooked a few years ago. I worked really bold and bright when I scrapbooked but I seem to use softer colors on my ATCs. So I'll have to see if I can break out of this mold! Anyway, I finally got the Vintage Sewing Artist Trading Cards finished up today. I made 9 of them so I should get 9 back. That should be fun! I found some images of vintage trade cards that I used for some of them. Here's the two I made today.

This one is pretty plain but it's really pretty in person. It has a trade card for the White sewing machine company. In case you're wondering what a trade card is ...

Over a century ago, during the Victorian era, one of the favorite pastimes was collecting small, illustrated advertising cards that we now call trade cards. These trade cards evolved from cards of the late 1700s used by tradesmen to advertise their services. It wasn't until the spread of color lithography in the 1870s that trade cards became plentiful. By the 1880s, trade cards had become a major way of advertising America's products and services, and a trip to the store usually brought back some of these attractive, brightly-colored cards to be pasted into a scrapbook. Some of the products most heavily advertised by trade cards were in the categories of: medicine, food, tobacco, clothing, household, sewing, stoves, and farm. (Ben Crane, www.seedsofknowledge.com)

So now you know what a trade card is. Both of these cards have one. This card has some great background paper that looks like old wallpaper, some lace and ribbon. I got the paper as a gift but I imagine if you got to a scrapbooking store (instead of the hobby store) you could find these - you can find papers that are a heavier stock than what's normally at the hobby shop. I have some Steam-a-Seam that is 1/4" wide and it worked a treat for attaching the ribbon. Way less messy than glue.

Next, is a Singer card. I tried to put more elements on this one. I used the same 'wallpaper' plus some of the 7 Gypies tape measure paper. The Singer logo looks a bit blurry because it lost some resolution when I made the illustration bigger. Let's just call it a dreamy glow! The trade card says "Tired and Nervous? No need for it" .. yep, advertising never changes, buy a better machine and you won't be frustrated! Now don't get upset that I have a little metal tag that says 'wife', I'm sure it was politically correct back then, LOL. I had thought of putting a button there but even though I have tons of buttons none looked quite right.

So that's today's productivity. I think we should have a contest to see who can guess when the next time I work on a D*O*L*L* will be !

Typo Generator

I belong to a select group of artists who make quality mail art. One of the projects we are doing is making business cards so we will have each others addresses handy for mailing. Right now I seem to keep everyone's addresses on post-it notes which I constantly lose! One of the women posted a link to a site which makes ‘typo posters’ - it is a very interesting little application which takes text you write, searches Google images for pictures that correspond to the words and then makes a little poster for you. You can change the text attributes, the colors, and backgrounds until you get one you like. This is what I chose for the background for my business card. The group is called Embellished Circus and I think the program did a great job of combining all the elements. The website is called TypoGenerator. It really makes cool little collage images - you’ll have to try it. But be prepared to spend some time there playing!

Puff it up!

I figured out why my postcard didn't puff up like I thought it would when I heated the craft foam - my stitching was too dense. I made another sample yesterday and did some really big stippling stitches - it puffed great! The sample was big enough to cut down for two postcards but then I had the problem of 'what do you put on top of a bunch of puffy fabric'? On one I put an applique I have had for about 5 years and the other got a leftover piece of the sample put on top (cut much smaller) and a little heart applique that I fussy cut from another piece of fabric. Didn't take photos - they're not that great - they are nice - but not great.

Oh - I bought some watercolor-paper postcards to try as a backing for the postcards instead of fabric. I'll have to dig out one of my old needles to use so I don't ruin the one I'm using on the machine now. I've been reading that a lot of people do this and it will be SO much eaiser to write on than fabric!

Not much else going on - today I cleaned house instead of play in my studio. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

Queen Bea

I've been just the busy little bee the last couple of days. Today I finished up my paper doll for a challenge on Doll Street and I got the fronts done for a couple of fabric postcards. After these are finished I'll only have two postcards left to make for the international swap that I've been doing for the last 5 1/2 months. I'll miss getting them in the mail! But then it's on to fabric artist-trading-cards - I've got three swaps to make them for. No rest for the wicked! Anyhow - here's Queen Bea - my paper doll. I used an illustration from a Dover Book for the torso and drew everything else.

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Fire on the Mountain

I decided to experiment with puckering fabric by shrinking craft foam today. Sounds strange, eh? Sew News magazine had an article about fabric bowls that were made this way. The easiest way to explain what I did is to show you.

Step 1 - I drew a little landscape on some craft foam and used 505 temporary adhesive to attach some white fabric to the foam. Then I free-motion embroidered the outline of the landscape. That just means sewing with the feed dogs down.

Step 2 - Use Dye-na-flow fabric paints to color it in. I wet it down pretty good first so the colors would run into each other. Kind of looks like something a grade schooler would do! LOL.

Step 3 - The fun part! Pre-heated the oven to 300 degrees, put the picture face down on a piece of foil on a cookie sheet, and baked it for about 2 minutes. It curled up pretty good. Took it out and flattened it. You can see that the fabric puckered pretty well on the green. It didn't pucker as much as I hoped in the other areas though. I wonder if that's because of the fabric or because my sewing was too dense. Will have to experiment further.
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Step 4 - Finish it up with more free motion embroidery and some beading. Put a back on it and finished the edges. Oh - guess I forgot to say that this is a postcard. I'm calling it Fire on the Mountain. I would like to send it to the big quilt show at Houston to be sold in a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. My favorite aunt just got diagnosed with breast cancer and this is dedicated to her. Would you pay $30 for this?
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Vintage Sewing ATCs

Still not working on that on-line class! Instead I made a set of vintage sewing themed artist trading cards for a swap. We can do a total of 9 cards, with each set being different, I might just do that if I can find some more vintage images that would work. The idea was to incorporate fabric, trims, lace, buttons, etc. in your work. This is what I came up with...

This one is my favorite .. it has a fabric background, then a piece of mulberry paper that you can barely see. On top of that is the image, some glossary terms from a pattern piece, and some tape measure pieces. 7 Gypsies has a 12"x12" piece of scrapbooking paper that is just rows and rows of different size tape measures, the name of the paper is Mesurement. It's great for this type of thing. Oh yeah - buttons. Getting the needle through the fabric, cardstock, and all the rest was a pain - probably would have been easier if I hadn't used an embroidery needle - it has a rounded point instead of a sharp one!

This one has a painted background with pattern tissue over it. The pattern tissue isn't as sheer as regular tissue paper. I wish it was. This one has some rick-rack on it that I dabbed with acrylic paint to tone down the red. Look at that machine - looks heavy as hell! Back when sewing machines were metal not plastic! I wonder what she was making.

Mimi Kirchner sent me some vintage sewing emphemera from the 70's. Pages from sewing booklets, the ones with photos of the clothes and the pattern numbers, plus how to articles. Think this one was put out by McCall but I don't have the cover just a bunch of loose pages so I can't really tell. The photos are a riot! It even has those stupid jumpers that I had to sew in Home Ec. Boy, does that bring back memories! But they are great for cutting out words and sayings, etc. This one has a sewing article as background, covered with tissue paper, then stuff glued to it. Technical term there .. stuff! It has lace on the bottom but it doesn't show up too well.

Back to the grind!

Time to work

I'm running out of time ... I am supposed to teach this doll as an on-line class next month and I haven't even started to write the class. I have to make another one of these so I can take step-by-step photographs. I've managed to get out the pattern pieces and play around with them - moving the arms around like it's a paper doll - but that's it. I haven't touched a doll in a while. Think that means something?

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By the way - this is the doll that Art Doll Quarterly kept for 9 months and never published. I wonder what they were doing with it? Keeping it in a dark closet to see if it would wither?

Art Display

Thought I'd show you some little dress forms that I bought at JoAnn's last week. They are having a going out of business sale and they are getting gobs of stuff shipped in. These were too cute to pass up. They have little alligator clips on the back so I thought they would be great for displaying little pieces of art. I just might have to pad the clips with some fleece to make sure bite marks aren't left on things though. I'm keeping these on my desk so I can enjoy the latest treasures I've received in the mail. It's going to be so easy to change out my art!

So what's on display today?

The little fabric ATC on the left is from Mimi Kirchner, isn't it great! I love her dolls - if you haven't seen her blog you have to check it out! The middle piece was just something I was playing around with for someone's art journal - she loves giraffes. The last piece is a fabric postcard from Becky D. - I just love her style. Beautiful stuff, huh!

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Beaded bod

Today I worked on another round robin project - Willow, one of the cloth 'Flat Stanley's'. I hadn't been sure what I wanted to do since I wasn't getting very enthused about making teeny tiny clothes. The artist before me had done some hand-embroidery and gave her 'tattoos'. So I carried the theme a bit further but I beaded.

I started at the hip - tying in to the spiral. I used the fern stitch out of the
Embeadery book - it's a book that takes classic embroidery stitches and shows you how to bead them. I've used it a couple of times on different projects. I did the fern stitch down the leg a ways and then just did a plain old backstitched line of beads. Put in a couple of crystals and accent lines for fun. I'll hang on to her for a while so the next gal in line doesn't kill me for sending it nearly a month early. Like I said before - with 18 of us working on these teeny tiny things you can't do much!