July - dolls on display and in progress

We only had one finished doll actually present at our July meeting this month. Everybody else has been staying busy, though; we have a lot of stuff in progress, and we're sewing lots of other things.  Shelby's newest doll was not at the meeting, because she is on display at Ivy Tech's 'Bindings: Art of the Book' exhibit by the book binding students.  Here she is:

Check out the link to Shelby's Facebook artist page to see more of her extraordinary work.  She seems to be gleefully subverting all of her art classes by turning every technique into an art doll!

Julie W. brought her finished mermaid angel pin doll.

Andrea brought her embroidered mosaic face, still in progress, but with much more hair.

Shelby also brought a sculpted piece in progress, working on her mythological challenge.

Erin brought several vintage dolls to share -- a Tinkerbell with gold paper wings, an all-cloth Japanese doll with lovely silk costume, and a Madame Alexander doll.

Ann C. brought this sweet needle-felted pincushion.

Martha brought a quilted wall hanging, appropriately named Blueberries and Cream.

Ann R. brought a doll-sized velvet crazy quilt.  She made another one to give away, but plans to keep this one for herself.

And a close-up of the metallic hand-embroidered stitching, to show why she won the county fair champion ribbon!

June 2013 show and tell, part one.

First up for show-and-tell today is our new member, Angie Fisher.  She has created stunning pin dolls of Hollywood starlets Josephine Baker and Clara Bow.

The faces are needle-sculpted on doe suede and colored with markers.; then they're costumed and embellished.

Angie's other doll was meant for the Alice in Wonderland Challenge in May.  She is a graceful dancer in a playing card costume.  Her body pattern is from a Patti Culea book.

Our next show-and-tell item is a not-exactly-small pindoll, made by Leslie, from an elinor peace baily pattern: Heather, the Girl in the Swing.

Nita made the next little fairy.  Every so often she just brings in the cutest, colorful little dollies!

Martha's still making little Tilda dollies, and selling them in her shop.

Martha also happened to be June's birthday baby.  This is her pile of birthday presents :-)

Below is a doll made by first-time club visitor M. J.  Your blogger did not write down the designer, but will work on finding out...

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This isn't even all of show-and-tell for this meeting, plus we had a great program presented in the second half!  Check back soon for the rest of the story.

April 2013 meeting notes

Katie's newest original art doll is here: If I Had Wings I Would Fly.  Please visit her site to read her detailed write-up of the techniques she used.

Her face was sculpted in clay during an online class.  We showed it in progress here. Her cloth body design was painstakingly designed by hand by Katie, who then created an exquisite costume for her.

The cape is minutely hand-beaded, and her dress is made from vintage silk velvet.

She is altogether beautiful.

In more show-and-tell, Ann has been applique quilting!  There are many other blocks finished  here too, and they are all just as pretty as these three.  The pattern for the blocks is by Edyta Sitar.

Julie G. brought her Deanna Hogan doll Suffragette Sally, started in a  Doll Gatherers class.  Her clay face has a cloth overlay, which is painted.

Here's the doll in her period costume.

Next up, a traveling goblin -- Mary found herself lucky and won Cody Goodin's recent give-away.  I'm not really sure what to say about him, but he seems happy to be here?

After show and tell, Julie G. showed us how she learned to make doll wings, a la Alison Marano.

Here's the sheer fabric and stabilizer used to sew the wings on the sewing machine.

And here's a beautifully embroidered maple leaf, with a channel sewn to hold the wire that will attach the wing to a doll.

It was a good meeting.

March 2013 - Progressive doll faces

Last month we learned about drawing faces, so this month some of the progressive dolls came in with their new faces.  Below is Julie G.'s doll, with a definite nod to Christine Shively's style.

And, here is her body so far -- you can see that the clown face coordiates very well with her harlequin stockings.

Here's another face and body combo, although Leslie decided that the first head was a little large for the body; she made a new head in a smaller scale, with features yet to come.

Our next face is not on cloth at all, but is Katie's sculpted clay head, now with painted features.  Katie has been taking Deb Wood's online sculpting class from the A for Artistic website.

And this is the lovely body that the clay head will go on.  Katie has designed an original cloth body in proportion to the head, and is creating her wardrobe from the skin out.

Please check out the beautiful lingerie, as this might be the last time it is ever seen.  Like all good foundation garments, this underwear will be appreciated only by the wearer.

Now, from the supremely realistic to the slightly more abstract form... Meet Martha's little 'Bug' doll, from Tilda's book 'Spring Ideas'.  (Tilda's new book 'Fairy Tale Wonderland' is pretty cute, too!)

Even more abstract: Leslie's new name tag pin doll, comprised of her initials L-W.

Moving back toward the traditional, cuddly doll: new member Maggie brought one of her angels, all in textured cream and pearls.

From huggable to wearable -- Jude brought a decorated sweatshirt, which she embellished with paint, felting, and jewels on top of the printed paisley pattern.

And lastly, back to cuddly, as new member Vicki brought her quilt top in progress, made from charm squares and jelly roll strips.

Believe it or not, even with all of this fabulous show and tell, we did manage to fit in Andrea's lesson on wefted yarn hair, so hopefully next month we'll see some fabulous hairdos, too.

February - Progressive Faces

Our second meeting of the year saw the second mini-class for our year-long progressive doll project.  Martha taught us to draw lovely features.

Even though our progressive dolls are just getting started, Martha finished one early, as a gift for her granddaughter.  She was unfortunately reminded of the importance of sealing the face if you're using water-based colors, but the doll is still a cutie (and might get a makeover to fix her mascara).

Katie brought a doll-in-progress from the online sculpting class she is taking with Deb Wood.  We can't wait to see her fully painted!

Just to prove that practice really does make perfect, Katie also brought evidence of the hours she puts into her creations -- a bag o' heads in various stages of needle-sculpting and coloring.

We are a multi-talented group, so we naturally make 'things that are not dolls' every once in a while. Shelby made these lovely socks. which are knitted from the toe up.

Ann R. made this stunning little crazy quilt for her antique doll club, the local chapter of the UFDC.  There is a lucky reproduction Jumeau doll that will receive this quilt, pieced from vintage fabrics and beautifully hand-embroidered.

Go home and practice drawing faces, and then put one on your doll!  Next month, we'll learn some simple wefting techniques for making doll hair out of all kinds of yarn.

January 2013 - a full house!

Our first meeting of the year, and we nearly ran out of chairs!  This is a very good thing, and we are delighted that our club is doing so well.  We had 19 members (plus one young guest) at our January meeting.

A meeting room full of dollmakers!

Besides just being there, of couse, we did stuff too.  We decided that our challenge theme this year will be 'Mythological Beings', after reluctantly ruling out exotic birds and magicians.  We decided that our workshop with Barbara Schoenoff this summer will be her Three Faces of the Goddess.

Three Faces of the Goddess, by Barbara Schoenoff

And, we had show and tell, of course!  First was Erin, who brought some fun paper samples made with her new Silhouette Cameo electronic cutter, which works with paper, fabric, and even fondant icing!

Next was Martha, who brought the cutest little matryoshka doll, made from the pattern in the November 2011 issue of Soft Dolls and Animals.

We also had some amigurumi, with a definite sci-fi twist!  Leave it to Mary to combine Mr. Spock with super happy crochet cute.

Last in the 'show' part of show-and-tell, Mary Jane brought in two vintage souvenir dolls from Ethiopia, possibly dating from the 1960s or '70s.

Ethiopian dolls, front and back

But wait!  There's more!  We also had 'tells' in our show-and-tell, starting with Katie, who told us about the online class Sculpting a Female Face she is taking with Deb Wood, at Adele Sciortino's 'A For Artistic' website.  And Sandy told us about the camel races in Qatar, where her daughter is teaching.  Smaller jockeys meant faster times, so children were often used as jockeys until recently, but it was dangerous.  Qatar is one of a number of countries who have recently switched to robot jockeys!  Now you know.

Believe it or not, our meeting still wasn't done.  We started our progressive dolls, by drawing our very own doll patterns.  Our job will be to sew them up and bring them to the next meeting, when they will get faces.  There was also one more special and historic item to share, but it will have to go in our next post.