Tilda, a little tubby lady.

This little lady is Tilda, she stands twelve inches tall and is made from tea dyed calico.  Her dress is made from fragments of fabric I discovered whilst having a tidy up after a big order.  The new style of Rhoda and Connie dolls are selling well but I had the urge to make an older pattern and Tilda is what came about.  I have made a girl very similar in the past and I love the whimsical and nostalgic fabrics in soft duck egg blue and berries.  Her knickers and underskirt are my Aunty Irene's kitchen blind fabric, (which I had fun making). Her stripy legs and little heart are what is left from a shirt of my husband's and the fabric makes great legs.  He has a red stripe one that I am trying to persuade him is going at the collar and then I can lay claim!

I think her hair is a little dark but it sits well with the fabric and her stripy heart, I couldn't find the perfect match. I will keep looking out for a different shade of wool tops and maybe have a change. 
I have discovered a new range of wool tops, 'Trimits Natural Wool Roving' it sells at Hobbycraft of all places and comes in small amounts just right for doll hair and is really quite cheap.  The range is very good and it is lovely to use.  I think they do the best yellow blond I have seen and I find blond hard to find, it's always too yellow like a sunflower or too cream.  Having found the pattern I have the urge to make a few more like her and put them in my craft fair stock, all different fabrics but all with lovely stripy legs.  Hope you like her.

 

 

Orla, Florrie, Maeve, Livia and Polly Dolly Brooches

I have made so many of these little ladies just lately, all for a wedding of a lovley couple from Dumfries - a little bride and groom, five pink silk skirted bridesmaids and thirty six little girls in pink as favours for the ladies, Janine the blushing bride, gave them to her guests before the wedding to wear as corsages, she collects dolls and had a doll themed wedding. Great fun, so I thought I would make a few more for my Folksy shop. They are lovely and fiddly to make and I settled on using net as a underskirt to reduce the weight, they stand at just slightly over 11cm or 4.5inches with a little brooch back. They look great on denim and an aunt of mine wears hers on her summer fleece and it looks good.

I am thinking of trying out some more summery versions with summer dresses and short bolero jackets without the winter hat and with maybe a head scarf - I am still working on the idea and will post one as soon as I work it out.  I am refining the bride and groom and will definately post the happy couple when I've worked them out more to my liking.
I hope you like them and would love to hear more of your comments. All the best, Pook.

 

 

 

 

 

Alternative Spring Sampler

I am quite busy at the moment, which is great, mostly with wedding work and I have put many hours in lately. So I decided to have a day away from work and dolls to look around me. The trees are wonderful at the moment and the leaves are just about out, blossom is everywhere and the intensity of the greens is amazing. So I decided to make a little sampler that reflected what I was seeing, it isn't a traditional sampler I wanted to be inspired by my surroundings and not the stitches so I used only straight stitch.  Starting with this photograph by 'Roger' of a spring stream and aspens I painted, stippled & stamped a piece of quaker cloth, tore strips of handmade paper and collected fresh leaves to make a start.  I wanted to capture movement and the contrast of planes, the horizontal movement of the stream and the verticals of the trees but subtly.  I had just one afternoon, about three hours and this is what I made.  I really enjoyed myself, it was good to just let it go rather than the precision of pattern cutting and stitching neatly.  I must try to do this every couple of weeks it is good practice and helps your eye, it's also good fun and gives you a break from the day to day.  I just thought I would share, I hope you all like it.



 

Little Polly and Florrie

These two tiny girls have come about as a wedding request and I have had great fun developing them.  Shopping for tiny handbags has been very satisfying.  They are wanted for a wedding in December this year and at some point I have to develop a bride and groom and five silk skirted bridesmaids.  But these two are the start of this investigation.  They are 11 cm tall and have tiny buttoned coats, crocheted hats and handbags as accessories.  They are brooches and have brooch backs sewn onto the reverse.  They have a tiny felt mouth and beaded & embroidered eyes.  The couple concerned wanted brooches similar to the new pattern dolls but on faces so tiny I have had to compromise and beads provided the answer.  These two little ladies are made from the tiny fragments of Tilda fabric I had left from my stash and the wedding girls are going to be in soft pink and grey as are the wedding guests.  The bride wants the ladies to wear little dolls instead of flowers in their lapels.  I am busily hunting down various handbags of the appropriate size and as many different kinds of tiny pale pink button as I can find.  When you start looking it is amazing what is about - for tiny handbags I would recommend 'Jashasi' on ebay and for tiny buttons of all kinds and colours you can't beat 'saph1re' also on ebay.  Having made several more of these little girls I am going to use net as an underskirt to a single fabric skirt to reduce the bulky look and save time and I am going to play with the jacket to develop various styles.  But all in all I am very pleased with the overall result and it is very gratifying to work so small.  I hope you enjoy them.

 

Annie Sophia, a handmade rag doll

Still working with the same basic body pattern I wanted to try different hair styles and a different outfit.  I like her hair, plaits, buns and ponytails are all options to try and I quite like the skirt and little felt waistcoat.  She looks a little too fairytale and her skirt need to be much shorter.  I am going to try using net as an underskirt.  I have just acquired some offcuts of silk velvet and hope to continue to vary her costume but so busy at the moment - for which I am very grateful but doesn't leave a lot of time to explore.  This pattern is proving very popular and I am very grateful for your comments which are so helpful and supportive, thank you.

Connie, Rhoda and Milly

I just thought I would like to share with you a little about Connie, Rhoda and Milly.  They are the three young ladies you see sat together, my new doll style which is getting some welcome attention and I thank you all for that.  But Connie, Rhoda and Milly were my great aunts, the older sisters of my grandfather.  I have been lucky enough to be surrounded all my life by strong women.  I lived with my Mum, her sister my Aunty Irene and my grandma, Ida and my grandad, Jim.  We lived in a great house in about 35 acres surrounded by woodlands and fields, with my uncle next door, my great grandma and her daughters, Milly, Connie and Rhoda  next to my Uncle James (my mother's brother James, who went on to have a son called James and a grandson called James, just to add to the confusion).  And next door to my great grandma lived her youngest son and his wife and family. We all lived in close proximity and tended to socialise with one another and as a child there was always to possibility of a fresh cake or the opportunity to play with some one because until I was six there were no more children within miles of us, so my great aunts became very important and very close.  

 Aunty Connie, on the left, never married, she was very deaf and very shy, she was always open to playing with boats in the bath and I would return down the lane wet through and wearing her cardigan because my clothes were sodden.  She was the gardener of the household and had the most beautiful camelias and azaleas planted in beds around the house.  Although shy, she was a woman of strong opinions and bold ideas and I remember her fondly.  Aunty Rhoda, in the middle, was the youngest of the three sisters, she was the social butterfly who loved her clothes and loved to dance.  She made amazing ballroom dancing costumes and had the biggest collection of costume jewellery I have ever seen, most of it from the 1920's and 30's so heavily influenced by art decco.  She was the only one of the sisters to marry, she married my Uncle Geoff when she was in her mid fifties and  they had a house in the next village but she returned every day to Harley House to spend her days with my aunts and her mother.  Aunty Milly was the middle sister, she never married and lived in Harley House until she was well into her eighties.  She was the cook and cake baker, her speciality were Conversatione Cakes made only on special occasions.  The most forceful of the sisters, she travelled extensively when young women didn't go off on adventures and was probably the one most in touch with the outside world.  I remember them only from when they had retired and settled in a house my grandfather built for them and his mother in the 1950's, Harley House.  By the time I came along in 1966 they were homebirds settled in their routine and living quiet gentille lives, with the odd cruise up the Rhine or on to the Fjords.  They had all been born in the house I shared with my family, Higher Kingsley Farm, but they had made the bold move to run a business together in the 1930's and ran a hotel for twenty years on the sea front at Blackpool called The Shirley.  It was very successful and at Christmas they got so many cards from people who remembered the elegant tea dances and Aunty Milly's glorious afternoon teas.  They seemed like very happy times and they had so many stories and memories to share.  I played with them, gardened with them, baked with them and was generally spoiled rotten by them and have very fond memories of these strong ladies living their lives to their own beat.

Milly and Connie, New Doll Pattern

 Gosh, I have been so busy and I am sorry it has taken over a month for a new post.  I have had a lot of wedding work, which is very unusual for this time of year and I have been working on a new doll pattern.This is Milly and her sister Connie, I have wanted to try for a more up to date girl for a while and I felt that she needed a slimmer profile and longer length.  She has a very slim waist, (not like me) but a very large bottom, (just like me).  I liked the idea of a simple face with all embroidered detail, rather than a painted face as I usually do.  She has french knot and straight stitched eyes, embroidered eye lashes and brows and a very pert little felt mouth held by two co- ordinating straight stitches.  I like Jess Brown's girls but after several attempts I find sadly I just cannot work that loose and so she is still quite tight, with finely finished details. I greatly admire Jess Brown's style, they are so relaxed.  Her hair is still wool tops as I cannot find anything better to fit my style, I have given her a shorter neater bob and I have ideas for dolls with plaits and with differing hair.  I have only made two and they are still a work in progress but they are fun to make and offer endless variety in dress and styling.  I hope you like them.