Old Hippie Santa

He's finally finished and uploaded to my Etsy store.  His paisley shirt is made from a vintage tablecloth.  I made him a little macramé belt consisting of square knots of leather and string.

Raccoon

Isn’t she adorable?  She follows DH around the yard every night.  If he’s not outside by a certain time, she waits for him in front of the house.  And we think she has five kits!  They all live under the little grey barn.

From My Workbench...

I made a pair of bell bottoms for the Hippie Santa.  The denim was recycled from an old dress.  The dress was out of style, but the fabric was still in great shape.  The floral trim was from my mom’s old sewing box and hand appliquéd to the lower edge.  The lace trim was taken from pillowcases that had seen better days.  I just couldn’t bear to throw the lace away. 

Hippie Santa WIP

I've begun to work on a Hippie Santa doll.  I used Shisha embroidery, couching, straight stitches, lazy daisy stitches and buttons to embellish his wool felt vest.  The edges were trimmed with up and down buttonhole stitches.  The peace sign was cut from embossed craft felt and sewn by hand to the back.  Embroidering on wool felt is pure joy!

Regency Dress for Miss Elinor Dashwood

I made Elinor's dress from the same modified Morrissey pattern as Marianne's (see previous post) with two alterations.  The sleeves were made from a contrasting fabric (to give the appearance of separate pieces) and the skirt was gathered in the back, leaving the front straight.  I have a doll who wants to pretend she is Austen's Emma Woodhouse - so it's back to the sewing machine, I guess...

A Little Sewing...

It’s rainy and cold, today – and hard to believe that temperatures reached into the upper 70s just a couple of days ago.  The weather is supposed to warm up again next week.

I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been really busy with our courtroom presentation business.  But, I have begun to sew again, just a little.  I made a pretty spring outfit for my American Girl doll, Saige.  The fabric was from an old photography backdrop that DH no longer needed.  It is some sort of synthetic but it looks like slubbed silk.  I made the gathered ribbon flower from the same satin ribbon as the sash.
 

 

And I finally got around to making a Regency dress for one of my 23” dolls.  I used a heavily modified Morrissey pattern and some leftover coordinated fabric I had used for bedroom curtains in the 80s!  So, here is one of my favorite dolls posing as Marianne Dashwood from Jane Austen’s SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.  I was so pleased with the results that I added it to my Etsy store.  I intend to create a couple more of these.  At the very least, I need to make an outfit for Marianne’s sister, Elinor.

 

Happy New Year!



Merry Christmas, Everyone!

It was 70 degrees and rainy this afternoon in southern NJ.  We even heard thunder nearby!  Hope you had a great day - and received everything you asked for from Santa!

Wishing Everyone a Happy and Safe Holiday!

 

Brynn and Friend

My husband took this photo through the kitchen window the other day of a deer visiting Brynn, one of our cats with feline leukemia.  You can see her behind the cat fence.  The fence is attached to a screenhouse and that is attached to an insulated shed.  Brynn shares her home with Steffi who has leukemia and AIDS.

 

Winter's Last Blast?

It has been snowing all day here in NJ.  We'll probably end up with 6-8 inches.  It's pretty - but it has been such an awfully long winter...

We originally purchased this barn to use as a studio,  It has been co-opted, however, by four cats: Jewel, Lotus Blossom, Sylvie and Fern.  I guess it's true, if you build it, they will come...

Nature Journal: Primrose

Primrose is derived from the Latin “prima rosa” and means “first rose.”

While I was drawing these primroses, I couldn’t get the song, “The Blacksmith,” out of my head.  It is a traditional English folksong I first heard performed by Steeleye Span.  Here is an alternative verse to the one that I wrote on my journal page that I had never heard before.  The third line is wonderfully alliterative.

“But where is my love gone
With his cheeks like roses
And his good black Billycock on
Decked around with primroses.”

 

Nature Journal: American Holly (Ilex opaca)

The big holly tree in my foundation garden was heavily laden with berries, but the birds have been feasting on them, leaving some branches with just a smattering.

Mocha, Banning & Jet

Poinsettia

I usually stall until my poinsettia flowers are well spent before I draw them.  This year, I decided to be a little more proactive and draw the flowers while they were still nice and fresh.  I received a small (5 ½ x 8 ½) hardcover Strathmore mixed media journal for Christmas and this was my first entry.

Meet Wilhelm

Here’s a quick shot of my latest Santa, Wilhelm.  He insisted on wearing a vintage rhinestone brooch on his jacket, even though I auditioned fancy buttons and even a Saint Christopher medal.  They really do tell you what they want to wear.  Anyway, I’m hoping to list him on Etsy sometime next week.

From My Workbench...

I’m making another Santa doll in the Magnolia Pearl style, very shabby with coffee-stained vintage textiles and trims.  Here is his hooded jacket in progress.  I had a great time hand sewing lots of mismatched vintage mother-of-pearl buttons all around the edges, while listening to Christmas songs.

Nightmare on eBay...

Well, I had an experience on eBay, this morning, which can only be described as Kafkaesque.  I had to cancel a sale because global shipping rejected my customer’s address.  Fine, I thought.  When I tried to proceed, eBay gave me a message that I needed to cancel from the French site, since that is where the transaction originated.  So, I went there and dang!  It’s all in French!  I can’t read French!  Oh, it gets better.  I called eBay in the US and spoke to the nicest lady (with a foreign accent) and she told me I had to go to the German site.  I protested and said I was pretty sure I was supposed to go to the French site.  She insisted we visit the German site (ebay.de) together.  And so we did.  I logged in (either my computer or their site was really S L O W) and finally navigated to mein eBay.  Then, all of a sudden, the nice lady told me she was wrong – and we were supposed to be on the French site, after all.  So to ebay.fr and mon eBay we went. She instructed me to choose the first option for cancelling a sale which was non-payment by the customer.  That was not the reason for the cancellation, I said.  My customer made several attempts to pay, but global shipping insisted that she didn’t have a physical address.  My customer does, indeed, have a physical address.  She’s had many transactions and has 100% positive feedback (but I digress).  I said we needed to choose an option that didn’t make my customer look bad.  The nice lady with the foreign accent (who spoke neither German nor French) and I mutually agreed to use the second to last option to cancel.  That, at least, had the word internationale in it, so we guessed (and we were just guessing at this point) it might be closer to the truth of what happened.  Anyway, my sale was cancelled, finally, but the whole ordeal was like a nightmare!  To her credit, the eBay customer service rep (the nice lady) was a sweetheart and very patient.  And we did actually do a lot of giggling!  She was using foreign language dictionaries to translate words.  But I wonder why eBay doesn’t have instant translation between the sites…  That would have saved a lot of time and trouble, today.

Recent Etsy Sales

I sold four Santa dolls from my Etsy store the other day (YAY!).  It really took me by surprise as it has been so quiet in my little shoppe.  Fortunately, I had lots of packing material on hand.  I save and recycle the bubble wrap that protects my Life’s Abundance cat food shipment every month.

TAST 2014: Lock Stitch Variations

Two rows of single lock stitches are laced for the first sample, followed by a row of double lock stitches and a row of beaded double lock stitches.