Meet Marie

This is Marie. I used Mimi's Victoria Rose for the body and gown. The hair was fun to make. I took small bits of wool and glued them around a skinny straw, making a tube. When it was dry, I slipped the tube off, snipped it into half-inch long sausages and glued her hair on.


I must confess, Marie is one of my favorites. She lives in Philadelphia, on my brother's mantle. He says she gets lots of attention. I have also made similarly appointed and posed Mary Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn, and Lady Jane Gray. I call them my "Heads of State" Collection. They all

live with my brother who truly appreciates them.






OK, now I've shown my sick side

Another Day Another Doll

Say hello to Hans and Eli. Hans (left) was made during one of my first doll classes. This was a wonderful class with Monica Shedden at "In the Spirit" which was a weekend mostly doll making event that only lasted two years. I think Hans was made in 2004 although my backward counting may be off. We had two years of "In the Spirit", one year with no local event and then last year ArtFest for the Soul began which has gloriously morphed into Art Is...

Hans is a storyteller. The original pattern had elfin ears which just didn't fit with the image I had in mind. His cloak is made of what I've heard called confetti fabric. It's a piece of muslin with oodles of scraps free-motion stitched on top. No muslin shows through. I used metallic threads. multi-colored threads. and lots and lots of cut up small pieces of fabric. A really fun technique. I've used it many times since. Hans came out great and he is proudly displayed in my living room. He is one of two dolls I made that weekend, the other being my Inner Godess that I made in ellen legare's class. My Godess actually took me over a year. I kept changing my image of her and she went through several iterations. I can't find a good picture of her
but I'll take one and post it another time. I just love the way she finally emerged.

My friend mary's daughter Samantha had a birthday coming up and Mary asked me if I could make her an elf or something. I took the Storyteller pattern, reduced it to 1/3 size, modified his nose, included the elfin ears and created Eli (left). His mushroom is a big, firmly stuffed "yoyo" with a stump. I made his boots from a Mimi pattern I embarassingly can't remember the name of. I love the curled toes. Samantha was tickled and came across the street to personally thank me.

This guy has no name. At least, none that I am aware of. He was a Christmas gift last year to my boyfriend who is a real nature boy. He likes hiking, birdwatching, identifying rocks and plants. As well as a thousand other things he likes to do. I adapted the pattern from several I had laying around and made the patterns for his clothes from paper towels until I had a good fit. The binoculars are made from paper clay and his hair is needlefelted wool. He looks nothing like my sweetie except for the clothes. He was really tickled with this gift and it is proudly displayed in his living room on the book shelves - in one of the few spaces sans books. This Christmas he is receiving a 20 yard bolt of floral canvas that I will be using to make seat cushion covers for his sailboat. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to trace the cushions to make templates in the short time since the boat came out of the water and the cushions came home. As long as he has them by spring, he'll be happy. Floral, you ask? He actually likes tasteful florals and he said he wanted a woman's touch in the cabin. So - floral it is!

Let's get started

This is my first entry in my first blog. So I guess introductions are in order. I am Patty and you can read my profile to get an idea about my art, etc. I am going to start with some history and post photos of some of the dolls I have made along the way. The first one I'll mention is Pearl. She is the doll on the swing at the top of my blog.

The image came to my after a particularly nasty day at work with a new boss's boss. This guy didn't want employees to enjoy themselves at all. No chatting unless it was strictly business related. He actually told our manager that he didn't want groups of people going on coffee break together. Looks bad if so few people are at their desks. So on my way home that first day of Dave, I had this image of a middle-aged woman in a business suit, kicking off her shoes, jumping on a swing and letting go. I made this doll that night. A co-worker named her Pearl when I brought her in to share. I kept her hidden from Dave but everybody else thoroughly appreciated her. More to come...