December 2010 show and tell

Sorry for the long gap between posts!  We hope that everybody who celebrates it had a wonderful holiday.

Let's see a work-in-progress from our December meeting.  Here is an original design by Peggy Smith.  He is Horus in his falcon persona as god of sky and protection.

His metal birdcage is covered with kimono silk and decorative fibers.

His head is sculpted, painted clay, and his feathers are ingeniously created of upholstery fringe.

The cage unlocks to reveal the reason for Horus' protective stance, a fabric-lined nest!

Peggy says Horus still needs some work, with maybe a little 'bling' added overall.  He looks great so far, and we look forward to seeing his final finished self!

Here's another doll that is almost, but not quite, finished...


A kitchen doll, complete with 'wooden' polymer clay spoon, but still missing her cookbook.

Made by Andrea Baughman from Julie McCullough's Secret Keeper pattern (and yes, she is shrunk to only 8 inches tall instead of 12!).  We'll just call her cookbook 'backordered' -- who hasn't had that problem with Christmas presents?

People's Choice Award Winner

Remember the challenge dolls that were judged in October?  Well, they had their very own table at the doll show.

Our White-on-White or Black-on-Black 2010 Challenge Dolls

We collected nearly 90 votes, and the winner was.......

Percival Poulet! shown here with his chicken fan club also made by his creator Julie G.
Percival is made from elinor peace bailey's Chicken Shaman pattern
His harem are really pincushion chicks from a pattern that Katie figured out.  Percival also won the judges challenge and was Judge's Choice as well.  He is our club's first 3-way winner -- he really does just make you smile to see him in person!

   Here are the other challenge dolls:

Count Vladimir Blackula made by Marti, and Snowflake made by Ann R.

Quiddity by Erin

White Winged Wishes by Julie W., and Lilli White by Nita

Lilli White and Quiddity tied for second place; I think this is the first time that has happened, too.  Here are our proud winners:

Nita, Julie G., and Erin



Display table of 2010 show, 2nd half

We'll continue our walk around the display table...

The end of the table features a Jane Austen doll (pattern by Gail Wilson) made by Julie G., as well as Morris the Butterfly Dancer (pattern by Babara Schoenoff) made by Andrea and an original doll from Nita, among others.

Must be time for a break -- the dolls are all sitting down!  We'll fill in more class doll descriptions in a later post.

More lovely groupings of various class dolls

A closeup of the end of our circuit, featuring several of Katie's dolls, and an original doll, Leilani by Mary.

Display table of 2010 show, 1st half

Here is the first group of amazing dolls on display at the Indy Cloth Dollmakers 8th Annual Art Doll Show and Sale.


When you walked into the library auditorium, this is what you saw!

Harlequin and Columbine, made by Ann C., based on a Mary Tressler pattern

Here is last year's People's Choice by Leslie (original), and a Pam Grose gargoyle by Julie G.

Also by Ann C., a wooden 'antique' doll, from a pattern in a 1950's magazine

Walking around the table, you find the GwynnEllen fairy class dolls

After the fairies were 4 dolls from last May's Herb Challenge

Setting up for the big show!

Our Doll Show was a great success!  Lots of dolls were displayed, lots of people came, and lots of art appreciation happened!  But before any of that, there was a lot of work involved in the set up.

Tables and chairs

Need to remember this configuation for next year!

Finally, some dolls!

Starting to fill up nicely now...

How did that go together again?

Lots of helpful advice!

Since the blogger took a gazillion pictures, we'll have to see the show itself spread out over a couple of days.  Check back soon to see more.

Library Display Case

Today we set up a small but impressive "Show and Sale Preview" in the display case at the Irvington Library.  Club members brought in some of their taller dolls to show off, and they make a big impact.

Leslie's 'Matra', last year's People's Choice Winner



Some Julie G. dolls, at least one from a Pam Grose class

 


a new fairy and a White-on-White challenge doll

Some 'previous' dolls from Julie G. and Andrea perch atop the right-hand side

 Don't forget to check out the tab at the top of the page for info on our upcoming 2010 8th Annual Art Doll Show and Sale!!!

Cloth-Over Fairy Faces

As promised, our October meeting show-and-tell had some finished fairies from Leslie's September workshop.  For her class, Leslie not only designed an original fairy body.  She also sculpted a head for the body from scratch, and then made a mold of the head, and then made copies of the head for everybody in the class.  Then they covered their fairy heads with cloth to match the bodies and colored them.

Nita's purple, green, and teal fairy has beautiful details everywhere you look!

Julie G.'s fairy has a more wild and windblown woodland look!

We'll have more pictures in a week or so, when the library display case goes up.  Don't forget to check out the show and sale info on the tab at the top!

October Challenge Dolls

October's meeting was very busy, as it was our first regular meeting since July. We chose our slate of officers to vote on in December, and caught up on lots of planning for our big show next month.

We also had some beautiful show and tell, but those pics will have to wait for the next post, because 6 talented club members finished their Challenge Dolls!

As you can see, everybody did a fabulous job of sticking to this year's theme:

White-on-White or Black-on-Black.

This picture has two dolls -- Percival Poulet and Snowflake.   The photographer apologizes profusely for not having a full picture of the lady Snowflake, complete with her tatted namesake.

Lilli White on her Wedding Day

Count Vladimir Blackula

White Winged Wishes

Quiddity

For those who like to look things up, here is a 'quiddity link'.

Aren't they all fabulous???  You will notice that there are no dollmaker's names attributed.  That is because these dolls (and any other challenge dolls that are finished between now and then) will be part of our annual People's Choice Award, and we don't want to bias our voting public. 

Please come to our November Show and see these stunning dolls in person!

Leslie's GwynnEllen class

For our September meeting, Leslie created a original fairy doll to teach some new techniques, especially a cloth-overlay on a clay face.  Quite a few dollmakers journeyed to Leslie's house, where she hosted the two-day workshop.

Check out these work-in-progress pictures!

a picture from early in the class from Julie W.

Julie G.'s nearly finished fairy, sporting angelina wings

check out Martha's tattoos!

Nita's demure fairy hair-do

    


Katie's berry fairy



Ann R.'s rainbow fairy, sitting on her own custom leaf



We are missing pictures from two class members. Denise could only attend the first day of the weekend workshop, and therefore missed the group photo below. And Lauren, who is not a member (yet?), but who by all accounts did an outstanding job on her first doll ever in this class!

a group shot - Ann R., Martha, Julie G., Nita, Katie, Leslie, and Julie W.

Check back later for show-and-tell pictures of the finished dolls.  I'm sure we'll see them all completely done by the November Show.  (and if you believe that...)

September 2010 meeting reminder

*** We get a lot of web traffic to this old post.  We don't know why, exactly, but welcome to our doll club blog!  Please hit the 'Home' tab above, or click here to see our latest news and lots of gorgeous pictures.  Thank you for visiting! (added Nov. 2011) ***


Remember that our September meeting will not be at the library!  We will join Leslie at her house for a 2-day workshop -- her original doll pattern focusing on a cloth-over-clay face.

Random tidbits

Our blog was mentioned in Robyn Coburn's wonderful site, All Things Doll.  Look for us in August's posts.  Here's what she says about how and why she puts her list of doll links together. 

What's new out there in the many splendored world of dolls?

A new place to visit every day, I hope, chosen by me, just because I like the look of it.

How cool is that?  She liked the look of us.

Also, go look at Andrea's PictureTrail site to see pictures of her playdate with an indigo dye kit from Dharma Trading Co.

And lastly, Cyndy Sieving has the schedule for Artistic Figures in Cloth 2011 posted.  Go check it out!

Cindee Moyer class

In August, several members of our club got to attend a special one-day class with Cindee Moyer.  She had created a doll, "Weighing the Possibilities", for the River City Figurative Artists' Guild, and it sounded so cool when they told us about it at our May luncheon that an encore presentation of the class was arranged and 10 lucky Indy ladies made the road trip to Cincinnati.

In a perfect universe, those who got to go would send pictures to the poor blogger who could not go... but as it is, you'll have to hop over to Katie's blog to see her created fabric and her elegant finished doll, Isabella.  Then we'll wait for our next show-and-tell.

Our day at Walk in the Park

We had a wonderful time at Walk in the Park -- it was NOT 98 degrees this year and it only rained for those couple of minutes (a brief but very exciting few minutes!).  People did buy some dolls, too, so our economy seems to be slowly returning to normal.

Here's our tent, complete with our club logo sign that Leslie rescued from her house flood two years ago.  I love our sign, but maybe we also need a banner to go across the front edge of the tent -- what do you think???

Of course, sales are only a part of why we do this art fair. We also get to talk to people about our club and our dolls, especially the classes we get to take.

For example, here's a doll from our Dancine class with Fran Parrigan Meehan, a Candlestick Diva by Arley Berryhill, and a Pop Up Puppet by Kathryn Walmsley, all made by our very own Julie G.

Here are some tassel dolls made by Katie and Jude in (and after) a class with Cyndi Mahlstadt.

And our 'display corner' has another Dancine, a Morris doll made by Andrea in a Barbara Schoenoff class, and Martha's Duchess doll made in Adele Sciortino's class, just to name a few.

All of the best pictures from the day are in the new slideshow over in the right hand sidebar - try it out!