Barbara Schoenoff's January Girl workshop

This month for show and tell, we got to see the results of the January workshop.  Several members braved the artic winds to meet Barbara Schoenoff in Danville, Illinois (home of the wonderful Threads of Time sewing retreat) to make these lovely ladies with fancy hairdos, made of braided trim that has been gessoed and painted.

January Girls, designed by Barbara Schoenoff

Below is Julie G.'s doll, Magdalena.

Next is Anne C.'s dolly-in-progress.

Next is Jude's doll, named Amabella.

Last is Katie's doll, still named January Girl.  Katie had fun adding some extra layers, like the sleeve caps and the ruffled tulle.

Below you can see where she modified the hairstyle to become a charming chapeau!

Thank you, Barbara, for another delightful class!

Just us, sewing and having a good time

At our weekend workshop this August, sewing along and having a good time.

Watched over by Barbara's dolls...

As well as Barbara herself.

We worked in groups...

And in twos...

(stuffing, stuffing, stuffing...)

And threes...

Sharing ideas...

And making goddesses.

Thank you, Barbara!

Barbara Schoenoff's Three Phases of the Goddess workshop

The Indy Cloth Dollmakers hosted member and teacher Barbara Schoenoff for our annual workshop, the Three Phases of the Goddess.  Finally, here's some pictures from our wonderful weekend with Barbara!

This is the face-drawing diagram she drew for us in class.  The way she added age to the face in layers was really extraordinary.

We spent part of the first day needle-sculpting faces, (as seen above), and we got to color them on Day 2.  Here are just a few of our finished sets of 3:  because, of course, if you are making all three aspects of a goddess, then you need to make 3 of everything!

by Katie

by Jude

by Andrea B. (just a little smaller!)

by Leslie

We also spent the first day sewing curved fabric strips together to piece the bodies.

Altogether a very large group of us got to attend the workshop.  The more, the merrier!

Here you can see our goal -- this is Barbara's original doll.

Three Phases of the Goddess, by Barbara Schoenoff

Lucy Landry's Embroidery class

More pictures from AFICC 2013 -- Two of us (Julie G. and Andrea B.) took Lucy Landry's embroidery class on Friday -- Embroidered Faces from Ancient Sources.  It was an excellent class, brimming with visual inspiration.

Lucy brought many of her own dolls, and the chance to really peer at the stitches up close and see how each one was used in different situations was wonderful.

She also let us peek at her notebooks, and walked us through the design process to create figures and characters based on very old artwork.

One technique she taught us to turn old imagery into our own personal interpretation was something she called 'nearly' blind contour drawing (because it's too hard to resist looking just a little bit!).

Here you can see the drawing that Andrea made while not really looking at the inspiration mosaic.  Details like curls and pupils were definitely added after, but the main lines were all drawn contour-style.

And here are the faces in progress near the end of the class.  We all had a great time and learned a lot.

our Leslie Molen class dolls

So we just finished our weekend workshop with Leslie Molen, making her Chun Woo doll.  We had a ball, and as you can see, the dolls are all nearly finished!

Well, almost finished, except for the naked one!  But doesn't she have lovely proportions?  And look at the movement and subtle variety in the poses.  All these dolls are standing alone -- close to the wall but not leaning against it.

Leslie's dolls are the 3rd and 4th ones in the picture below.  I think it says a lot about her pattern and how well it went together that you cannot tell hers from ours right away.  Not to mention, how successfully she taught the techniques.

We spent one entire day just on the heads - needle-sculpting, making a cloth overlay, painting our own (teeny-tiny!) eyes, and then insetting the eyes into the head and coloring the face.

Our second day was assembling the dolls and dressing them.  The pre-work really paid off, and they just need minor finishing touches to be completely done.

Thank you, Leslie, for a wonderful doll-making weekend!

Beaded Faces from Annie Hesse's class

Well, it has been a long time since the last post, due to the icky flu and other life complications, like trying to do homework for upcoming doll classes, and there are probably other things I should post first, but... we have fabulous pictures from our Annie Hesse workshop this weekend!


faces by Julie G., Bonnie, and Lynn

We just had Annie here for a 2-day workshop, and everybody finished the beaded face in class (although there may have been some midnight oil burning too!).  Most of us also got most if not all of the doll finished as well.


faces by Leslie, Martha, and Andrea

Annie taught a seated variation of her Spirit Walker doll; the doll is named Garden Party and has wonderfully extravagant ribbon skirts!  She had nice patterns printed up for us, but they are not up on her website yet.

faces by Nita and Liz

Many of the dolls were still armless at picture time, but Ann R. got her doll's arms attached in time to hold Barbara's beautiful-but-bodiless face for the group portrait!

faces by Mary Jane, Ann R., and Barbara

Annie was a great teacher, and we all had a really wonderful time with her!  She had traveled directly from teaching her Raggedy doll in Detroit (we should have asked her the name of the group there) to teaching in Indianapolis.  Even doing two different dolls in two cities in 5 days, she was totally organized.  AND, she remembered every person who had been in a class with her before, and asked about family members and projects and was just super to hang out with.

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...)

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.