New dolls have been added to the shop, little harvest mice with embroidered dresses or dressed in Liberty Lawn. I will be making more mice, rabbits and birds over the next few months, hand embroidered details to faces and sometimes dresses.
These little mice represent the start of something new and different for me and I am loving all the fiddly stitching and their overall look.
I am working here, on 22 count hardanger and each piece of the dress must be overlocked before commencing to stitch or the evenweave unravels. Also each piece of the bodice must but slightly larger than the pattern to accommodate the embroidery as this pulls in the bodice.
I thought long and hard about how I would work the embroidery on the dresses and settled, quite happily, for the counted thread work style that I had developed over the years. It will be interesting to see how the work develops.
I want to work on evenweave fabric so that I can incorporate counted thread work as well as free style embroidery. I must admit to liking the order an evenweave imposes. This little girl has french knots, bullion knots, lazy daisy and lots of straight stitches with couching as well as fern stitch. I wanted to create a meadow.
I used a Liberty lawn as her underskirt and this has proven a mistake. It distracts from the embroidery, competing with it not complimenting the stitches. Similarly I stitched a small sampler for her sachet and that was too much of a similar look. Instead I have gone for a tonal silk with a bullion rose.
Since last year I have noticed a tremour in my right hand that has started to make painting tiny faces very difficult but I can embroider forever. So more mice, rabbits and birds and less of everything else. I will still do commissions but only one or two a month not the number I have been doing. I love making this little mouse, she was a joy xx
Little embroidered bird dolls to share, a goldfinch and a robin. All dressed in Liberty tana lawn, fabrics picked to compliment the hand embroidered plumage of the the songbird. Over the next few months I will be working on embroidered dresses as well and I am looking forward to see how the emerge. I have some definite ideas but how will they translate - I will have to do my best. xx
She has a little fern green hat with an acorn charm and is finished with organza ribbon, tiny buttons and leather shoes.
She has hand styled wool tops for her hair in a warm brunettewith a hand painted, hand embroidered face.
This is an old range of fabrics from Lewis and Irene but one of my favourites. If I see it anywhere I snap it up. I love ferns both in the garden and in the house, we even have a Wardian cabinet full of tiny ferns!
