Author Archives: Cindy Rice

About Cindy Rice

My wonderful husband, my beautiful daughter, and I live in northeastern Illinois with our two sweet chihuahua boys. For as long as I can remember I have loved dolls and making things. I got my first Barbie when I was only three years old! My mom sewed for my Barbie dolls and taught me how to use her sewing machine when I was only seven. I cannot believe she let me near that needle, but she did. Not having enough money for my clothes habit in high school and college led me to start sewing all of my own clothes. There were so many fabric stores around back then and fabric was so inexpensive. I would wait for the 99 cent pattern sale and go crazy. Sewing for myself continued well into my 30’s. (I even made my wedding gown and bridesmaid dresses.) Shortly after I got married I left my full time graphic design position and started designing cross stitch patterns. I called my company “The Lilac Studio” and sold my botanical patterns at trade shows, through distributors which sold to retail shops, and mail order. My most popular pattern, “A Bouquet of Pansies” sold 5000 copies and won a J&P Coats Golden Needle Award! I was also featured in various cross stitch magazines and designed special projects for the magazines. When my daughter was born I didn’t have the time needed to cross stitch and design patterns all day long so I let my pattern design business slip away. And then I started discovering dolls again and I now had an excuse to start buying them. The only problem was that they were for my daughter and not for me. I soon discovered all of the adult collectors out there and decided I would be one of them. I started small at first, collecting Mattel Kelly dolls. Soon I collected over 100 Kelly dolls! After Kelly, I discovered Helen Kish’s Riley and Tonner’s Ann Estelle. I have since learned to knit doll sweaters and love an excuse to knit so most of my doll outfits include a sweater and/or hat. I love creating miniature outfits for dolls and enjoy sharing them with others. Currently I create doll ensembles for Ruby Red Fashion Friends, Kish Bethany, Dianna Effner's Little Darlings, Wilde Imagination's teeny tiny Amelia, Kaye Wiggs BJD, Boneka 10", Linda Macario's Penny.

Patience & Amelia Thimble Show Off Their New Outfits

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Patience and Amelia Thimble (both from Wilde Imagination) are so very excited to show you their new “sister” outfits.

They love their super soft knitwear that I hand knit out of lace weight kid mohair/silk yarn in a shade of pink that reminds me of cotton candy. I hand embroidered little forget-me-nots in shades of floss to match the print in Patience’s dress. I gave Amelia an extra flower on her dress, my interpretation of the multi-petaled mum like pink flower. They are happy girls, can you tell?

I tucked my delicate new cotton cluny lace between a fold in the skirt. Love this lace!

I think the colors in this print (Hope Chest by Josephine Kimberling) are so pretty for fall. The pinks and turquoise blues are muted just enough for autumn. The terracotta, rust, and green are more typical for this time of year. I love all of these colors together! I am always looking for fall color palettes to have “pretty” colors in them. I typically do not like complete earth tone color palettes.

Amelia says, “Thanks for stopping by!” “Love you guys!”

Both of these OOAK outfits are now available on my website.

Progress…

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Been working away… I have some work in progress photos to share with you before everything is completed and put on my website.

A collection of balls of yarn that I recently used for a sweater that I knit for Tonner’s Patsy doll.

I used a few of these miniscule buttons for the sweater’s decoration too. These are too small to actually use for buttons, but they make cute decorations. The jar is only about an inch tall!

I love striped sweaters, but the ends, oh, the ends that are left for weaving in. That I do not like. As my striped sweater gets closer and closer to being completed, instead of being excited, I feel a sinking feeling. Those ends are multiplying like crazy. Ok, this is silly, but I had so many loose ends from this sweater that I had to count them. Ten stripes times two ends each, times three sections (two sleeves and one body) equals 60 ends!

Finished!!! Yeah!!! This is my scrap bowl after getting all those ends woven in and snipped off. What a feeling of accomplishment!

I had some scrumptious new lace arrive in the last couple of weeks from England. This is a very fine cotton cluny lace and oh, so beautiful! I love it so much. I have more coming next week…a narrower lace and ecru in color. This is a winter white color with a 3/4″ width.

And, last but not least, here is a picture of Patience’s new sweater on the blocking board. You can see the coordinating dress fabric and embroidery floss that I have gathered for this project. I ended up not using all of the colors of floss though. This happens quite often. My projects most always deviate from my well thought out plans. I find that what I thought would look nice, in actuality looks pretty bad. In this case the browns and darker aqua didn’t work. The finished outfit ended up being much softer in color. I am very happy with it and can’t wait to share pictures of Patience modeling her new outfit for you. Of course Amelia Thimble has a coordinated dress too.

It’s Starting to Feel a Bit Like Halloween

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I’ve been pulling out my orange fabrics and embroidery threads, mixing up different shades of orange dye for my wool, and buying tiny pumpkins and candy corn for photo shoots. So here in my studio it is “starting to feel a bit like Halloween” even though it is still over a month away.

I made three teeny tiny dresses for Amelia Thimble. I custom mixed and hand dyed all the oranges for these dresses. The embroidery took some thought. It was a challenge figuring out how to embroider pumpkins and candy corn. The first dress coordinates with an outfit I made for Wilde Imagination’s new Patience doll. See pics below Amelia.

Here is Patience in her new outfit. I absolutely love this new doll. I wish there was more time in the day. There are so many things I would like to make for her.