Monthly Archives: December 2015

A Beautiful Beginning and a Beautiful Ending

When the day starts and ends as beautifully as today did, what happened, or did not happen, in the middle doesn’t seem to matter so much. As you can see, the day started out with a beautiful sunrise, which I was up quite early to see.

I was in the car for about an hour and a half bringing my daughter to school and then making the trip back home. When I got home I discovered the power was out (it never is), so the garage door wouldn’t open and, here’s the really unfortunate part, I had locked all the storm doors (nope, no keys for those), so had no way to get in the house. I’ll leave out the parts about what came out of my mouth and the kicking of the storm door (to see if it would have pity on me and unlock itself), not a pretty site.

I didn’t get back inside the house until 12:30 in the afternoon (enough time to eat breakfast (or lunch), shower, and get back in the car for pick up! Knitting, sewing, embroidering, crocheting? … no, not today, I’m afraid.

And, now here’s how the day ended. It took my breath away, and made all the craziness of the day disappear.

The sunset is reflected in the windows; can you see it?

We have these cute paper houses in our bay window. You can see the roof tops of some of them in the photo above. They are super easy to put together and last from year to year. They are pinned on my “Paper Crafts” board here. Or, you can go directly to the websites where these came from: Dover Publications and welovetoillustrate.blogspot.com to print them out for yourself. Each house prints on a basic sized sheet of paper.

While writing this post, I am sitting in front of the cozy, warm fire and enjoying the Christmas tree, so the ending on this crazy day is perfect.

Hope you had a much smoother day than I did, and I hope your beginning and ending was as beautiful as mine was.

Fabric Delivery

6 Replies

One of the reasons I love to do what I do is the “need” for fabric. I cannot sew a dress without fabric. And, really I don’t have that much. Ha ha! These days so many illustrators are putting their super sweet designs onto fabric and it’s impossible to resist them, you know? And then there’e that “gotta fill up the shopping cart to get free shipping” thing.

My fabric stash is growing quicker than I can use it. I have to slow down, really I do. Another ha ha, I’m afraid.

When I know a new order of fabric is being delivered it is a very exciting day for me. All that new inspiration coming to my studio… it’s so, well inspiring!

The two on the right were previously purchased, but came from the same collection. Too cute for words!

These four are my favorites!

If you’d like some of my homegrown tips on selecting fabric for doll clothes, I talked about it in this post here.

Now, if only I can add twice as many hours to my day I’d be all set.

Bye for now!

“My Forever Snowman” for Millie

6 Replies

Our snow is long gone here. In fact, it has been so mild; it feels like Thanksgiving is weeks away, not Christmas. No, I am not complaining, the cold and snow will come to stay for many months, it always does. In the meantime, I am thoroughly enjoying this gift of nice and easy weather.

Since we don’t have snow outside, Millie is here with her snowman that lasts on and on and on, he’s her forever snowman. I made him myself in my studio, so he is filled with hugs and love, and ready to “snowify” your day.

I didn’t name him; that is for his new girl to do, so I’ll just keep referring to him as the snowman. The snowman is made completely by hand out of wool felt, embroidery thread, beads, mohair yarn. I wanted to get his expression just right, so that your heart would “melt” a little when you gazed into his deep dark eyes. Did I succeed?

The snowman’s hat is so tiny that it is half the width of Amelia Thimble’s! I made it with the same hand dyed merino and white mohair that I recently used for Amelia Thimble and Sugar’s sets. The scarf is crocheted using matching yarn from Millie’s dress. Snowman’s arms are knit with tan mohair and have loop hands for holding. Here he is holding a sequin snowflake and a beaded candy cane that I made years ago. He is gently stuffed with plastic doll making pellets, so he has a bean bag feel to him.

Millie’s hand knit wool dress has a sprinkling of snowflakes: mohair colonial knots, delicately embroidered star-shaped flakes, icy clear seed beads, and clear sequins with white seed beads. The snowflakes fall in a pattern from the left shoulder down and around the appliquéd snowman which is sitting above the “fur” trim off to the right. He’s super tiny, but cute.