I'm into RECYCLING!

Towards the end of last year, well around the Autumn time,I was mooching at an end of season Boot Sale and saw this little doll dressed as a clown in black and white silky stuff- she was in a box of 10p things at the front of a table, among a load of rubbish, very dirty, unloved and sitting/glued to a grotty cushion, all very small of course, she is only about 9" tall. I love making cloth dolls, and have been having a go at small ones, so thought I'd try my hand at this recyling lark!

Once home, I stripped the doll of everything, and discovered she was made from pipe cleaner type stuff. I washed all the china bits and took this pic .............

Well, she sat around like this, looking nice and clean but still very sad, until I saw this book advertised. I have the Patti Medaris Culea Cloth Doll Making Books, but Ray Slater is an English lady with a different slant of things, mainly making dolls by wrapping wire....... bingo!

I wrapped my little doll in a strip of polyester wadding, about an inch wide, all over the fabric covered wire, to make a body arms and legs, then using an old silk multi coloured scarf (from a previous Boot Sale of course) I wrapped her again, until she was covered - following very loosely the instructions in Ray's book. I then added stitches with silver thread, and wound some more with thicker thread etc. until I liked what I had done, and finished off with a piece of the silk machine stitched on the bias, and wound it around her head.

You can see she is not very big - she is sitting on the side of the bird bath.

I have made a small wire frame and wrapped it in wadding, following Ray's book. This one is only about 11" tall. I'll show you when I have finished it. In the meantime, I am hunting for more of the little dolls to recycle. I recently bought a soft mermaid doll ...........! (watch this space)

HOME AGAIN......

Arrived home last Tuesday, having had a brilliant time cruising the Mediterrean and being thoroughly spoilt. Spent an awful lot of time here....... having found a 'good read' in the Library. The sun was really warm (in the eighties), fabulous food non stop, and young waiters popping up everywhere! You may be wondering where all the people are - I took this pic. on a day when most of them were off on excursions!!........
I did some watercolour painting during a couple of the days we were 'at sea'. There were Watercolouring Art Classes available (free - first come first seated so to speak) and this is what I managed ......

A sunrise (from a postcard) A sunset - also from a postcard

A 'storm at sea' from the same postcard - different colourway....

and a make believe scene, following the tutor's instructions, but doing your own colours. There was no 'pencil drawing first' on any of these, just straight in with the watercolours, which I found very similar to painting on fabric really, although of course the medium is very different. I am now ready to have a go in my sketchbooks, and have some great pictures to inspire me.

Here are just a few ..........

I shan't be blogging for a while, as I want to 'practice' a lot, and see if I can produce a Journal of my trip, as a memento. If I manage to create anything worth sharing I'll be back.

In the meantime, have a great Chrstimas, and thanks for dropping by - it is very much appreciated.

We are off on a Cruise ..........

We are off on Monday on the last Mediterranean Cruise on the QE2 before she leaves for Dubai to become a floating Hotel. We leave home tomorrow (26th) for a stopover in the New Forest - just so we don't miss the boat on Monday!


We leave Southampton at 5.00pm and call in on Lisbon, Portugal; Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy; Naples, Italy; Messina, Sicily, Italy; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Zakinthos, Greece; Athens (from Piraeus), Greece and on the way back Girbraltar and Vigo, Spain, docking back at Southampton on the 11th November.


If you fancy a ride on the Bridge click here - the picture changes every sixty seconds.


I'm hoping to get lots of inspiration from this trip, so I'm loaded down with sketchbooks galore to fill up .............!


Hopefully I'll be blogging again in a few weeks time, but then maybe not. I may decide to stow away and go to Dubai ..........!

Soft Pastels Workshop with Vivien Walters

I went on this brilliant Pastels Workshop yesterday, tutored by a very talented Artist, Vivien Walters, who does the most amazing pastels of animals, and has recently added this pheasant to her tutorials. I came home with this lovely pastel that I had spent all day working on, learning all the time about how to use pastels, which was a first for me, blending colour, layering, building up the shape (he does have attitude doesn't he) applying strokes etc.etc. I can take credit for all of that appearing on the picture, due of course to a very good tutor, but I cannot take any credit for the composition! Let me explain .........

Vivien has developed a technique where she draws and paints an original picture from a photograph (taken by her husband I think!) then photographs it, puts it onto her computer, deletes all the colour and prints out a 'drawing' onto whatever type of paper her students will be using. She provides us with a printout of the original photograph for the true colour, and a copy of her original painting for inspiration, as we work.
We then start to add colour, building up gradually, under expert tuition..
feathers start to appear and his attitude begins to show itself more..
Finally we titivate and tease and layer some more on the background, never really knowing when enough is enough!
Me at my easel.......

It was a lovely day and I thoroughly enjoyed my first introduction to using soft pastels. The pheasant is actually printed onto velour paper, hence the softness to the look of it. It is a wonderful way to learn how to use a specific medium, and still come away with something to be proud of. Do visit Vivien at www.vivienwalters.co.uk and take a look in her Gallery - she is an amazing Artist.

Dale's Workshops 5 and 6

Well, I didn't manage to create any 'finished' pieces, but I did manage to make a few more samples, following Dale's brilliant instructions. Here is a 'name' design, using my first name in handwriting and my surname in capitals, then joining all the lines, and filling in with colour. Can you still see my name?
This is a piece of 'fabric' I made using metallic netting with lots of scrap bits of everything layered between two pieces of netting and embellished from one side only.
This is some brown lace (put together rather like a double edged frill) that I embellished onto felt, some until it was flattened completely and some left with a bit of frill, then other fancy threads and coloured wool tops added.

This is a piece of wet felting I made when Carol showed me how last month(which to my amazement only took about 20 minutes). I then embellished this thick wool over it in a grid, hoping to fill the areas, but didn't get around to it. I will though, eventually, as I have plenty of samples I can cut up, and hand and/or machine stitch into further. It would make a super cover to keep samples in (if I have any left!)

This is an experiment I did in Lesson 2 I think, but I've put it here, as it was the technique I used for completing the postcard below, that is using the Embellisher from the back. This is a piece of black felt with a dyed piece of cheesecloth to cover, then embellished from the back pushing the black felt through to the front. (I then did some stitching on the 'trunk of the tree')
This is the postcard I made for Calendar Girls for September, and I used the above technique to get the green felt that the white hand painted silk is free stitched onto, to come from the back to the front to cover the silk. (I must add the beautiful painted flower was not done by me, but by a friend of a friend's Mum)

I've thoroughly enjoyed following Dale's Embellishing Workshop over the six week period, and understand she is planning more Workshops for 2009, details of which you can find at www.thethreadstudio.com.

I've now returned the Embellisher to my friend Janet, but she has said I can borrow it again, any time ..........now isn't that so generous!!

Naughty but Nice - two more spreads

I really am enjoying digging into my stash of lace and stuff, looking for just the right thing, trying to 'catch the mood' of the picture, but not overdoing it!!
After the red plush atmosphere of the spread above, I thought I'd try a softer approach for this one. I think it has come off, but I may go back to it....
I'm off on holiday for a couple of weeks, and really must see if I can catch up with Dale's Workshop, so will not be posting again for a while.

Dale's Workshop - Lesson 4 - using knitting

First of all there is the weaving piece from Lesson 3 I revisited!I've added some flowers from a piece of embellishing fabric I made with black chiffon and wool tops. The wool tops were embellished in roundels so I was able to cut out sections, squeeze them up into petal shapes and embellish more, then added them to be weaving. I think it looks a lot better with, than without! Now to the knitting .......
I embellished a piece of knitting (in circles) I tried a piece all over but couldn't really see any difference - here you can see the dark circles are where it is embellished. I then cut it into a flower shape (see below) and it almost fell to bits!
However, I quickly embellished it onto this background of chiffon (I like the way you get a chevron pattern when you go up and then come down) which caught most of the pieces! I then free machine stitched it with metallic thread to define the shape and added the centre. This was made with a circle of embellished knitting trapped between water soluble fabric, and stitched with metallic thread.

Here I've made a sample using some thumb knitting.....