April 2010 Meeting

Our April meeting featured Marti from The Blooming Dragon, her studio/shop across the street from our library, showing us how to work with silver clay.  It turned out to be easier than many of us thought it would be, and we made some beautiful doll-sized buttons, pendants, and charms for our dolls. 

We also added a few charity dolls to our collection.

Lastly, we got to see a few finished show-and-tell items.  Julie G. brought in her Lottie doll from Gail Wilson's class...

and Katie brought in her Cyndi Mahlstadt doll from the recent MM&M workshop!  Katie also had her tasssel doll from the same weekend.

Last of Adele's dolls in progress

Here are all the rest of the progress pictures from Adele's workshop.  Hopefully the next meeting will have some finished dolls at show and tell!

Jude used a heavy green satin brocade to complement the pink dress.  This picture just hints at the jeweled additions to her headdress.  Later on, a matching green purse was added to the 'ensemble'.

Leslie gave her mannequin high-heeled feet before the class, and will undoubtedly show them off in fancy shoes.  The leaf motif fom the bodice is reused as hair.  She made the most of a small amount of the dark fabric to make the twisted oversleeves.

Ann used a different doll pattern as her mannequin, but the same purple-orange-green color scheme as a few others in the class.  Adele encouraged us to work with colors we usually avoided, so we had to really stretch our comfort zones.

Lee chose monotones of cream, gold, and brown, which is a different challenge.  She's really playing up the different textures (check out the gold lace headdress!), and had some faux pearls and more gold braids which will add the rich effect.

The sleeves and the center skirt panel of Andrea's dress all came from a sheer print that Barbara brought to share (thank you!).  There's a ruched orange ribbon edging the green Texture Magic upper sleeves, and a yellow ribbon rose in the hat.  The green hair is a loopy home-dec trim.

More dolls in progress

Here are a few more of the dolls in progress from Adele's workshop -- with 15 dollmakers attending, we had a wonderful turnout.

Bonnie may have come closest to finishing her entire costume -- complete with an ostrich feather and veil in the very fancy hat!  Some of the fabrics she used started life as Halloween costumes and curtains.

Lynn is not a club member (yet?) but joined us to make her very first cloth doll ever.  She worked out her theme of Central Asian folk costume beautifully.  The jacket fabric was supposed to be for her, but she's sharing it with her doll.

Next we have another guest, Julie from Illinois, and another new dollmaker, Pam.  Pam's costume is 'in the planning stage' in this photo, but Julie's loose flowing dress is already augmented with ribbon and trim.

Last for this post is Liz's doll, in muted colors but very rich textures.   The plan is to add some of Adele's small ribbon flowers to the lapel next.

Dolls in progress from Adele's class

During Adele's workshop, we started some really fabulous costumes.  Here are a few:

Barbara S. started her costume with overlapping bias strips, borrowing a technique she saw in Threads magazine.  The high collar uses some of Adele's shibori pleated ribbon.


Denise D. used several of the new techniques from class, including fringed dupioni for hair, and the Texture Magic on the lower sleeves.

Katie J. is our resident dressmaker, and she made a couture dress with princess seams and pink piping along the collar and peplum!

Martha's doll is draped in a fabulous pink hand-dyed velvet.  The overcoat might be shortened to let more of the dress show.

Finally, our Julie G. tried another new technique and created a bodice of painted Textiva.  There's an awesome coat in the works that will be layered over the bodice and velvet pants.

Creative Costuming with Adele Sciortino

Our club invited Adele Sciortino to teach our 2010 Spring Workshop -- Creative Costuming.

The middle of the room was piled high with gorgeous fabrics -- slinky, silky, shimmery material with velvets and brocades and... And then there were the ribbons!

Adele brought the most sumptuous ribbons to sell. It would have been hard NOT to make a beautiful costume with all this to choose from.

This is a partial sampling of the techniques we would learn during the class.  A lot of them were about manipulating ribbon and material, and how to create different effects with them.