Tag Archives: doll dresses

“Garden Delights” & “Nature’s Surprises”

I hope you all are having a great summer weekend. We are enjoying beautiful summer weather here in northern Illinois. The humidity is low, the sun is shining, and for July the temperatures are staying on the cooler side.

Yesterday, I got my promised Mother’s Day visit to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. We usually go either at the beginning of the growing season or towards the end in late August, so this time was a little different.

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Today I’ll show you the photos from our first stop at the gardens. Please excuse the quality of my photos; it was a very sunny day. The Butterflies and Blooms exhibit was moved this year, so we actually noticed it and decided to check it out.

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This exhibit is a large screened in enclosure with butterflies flying all around. Flowers that butterflies particularly love are planted everywhere.

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The butterflies will land on you too. I was told that they seem to love white the best. I was wearing a darker colored top, so they left me alone, but landed on my daughter’s shoulder.

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These little feeding stations are set up throughout the exhibit. I think these two are dining on banana.

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The chrysalises are purchased and hung on wooden dowels until the butterflies emerge. Here is one that is almost ready to fly free.

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This visit to the Butterflies and Blooms exhibit at the Chicago Botanic Gardens was perfectly timed (not planned though) to show you Talyssa and Gracie’s new ensembles. I don’t usually make two at the same time for Kaye’s MSDs, but the fabrics are from the same collection and begged to be made into coordinating sets, so I did just that. I hope you like them. By the way, both sets are the same size so can fit both the 17″ and 18″ MSD bodies.

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As you can see, Talyssa found her own butterflies in the garden.

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And Gracie, found a little house wren that she befriended.

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Gracie’s “Nature’s Delights” and Talyssa’s “Garden Surprises” ensembles will be available tonight (July 10, 2016) at 7:00 pm CST, cindyricedesigns.com. Check the “Shop What’s New” page at that time for more details.

“Heavenly Hydrangeas”

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I love hydrangeas! I cannot grow them, but I love them all the same. I see hydrangeas blooming in neighbors’ yards seemingly without any extra care or attention, and they are so BEAUTIFUL! They don’t even want to grow for me, much less bloom. I did have one hydrangea??? grow for me, but the blooms were so tiny and not at all hydrangea-like, so I question whether it was a hydrangea or not. And, the fact that it actually grew leads me to believe that it was mistakenly marked as a hydrangea and NOT a hydrangea at all. Oh, well. . . maybe one of these days I’ll get lucky. I surely won’t give up!

My daughter brought home a couple of cut hydrangea blossoms for me the other day. The blue color reminded me of a dress that Sugar has been wearing for a couple of weeks now. I couldn’t decide on the embroidery to get it finished, so it waited for me to be inspired.

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Aren’t the blossoms gorgeous? And don’t they match Sugar’s dress perfectly! They were just the inspiration I needed. Sugar is one happy little Pukipuki.

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Clusters of colonial knots worked perfectly to give the feel of a hydrangea bloom. Since I love both pink and blue hydrangea blooms equally, I decided to use both of these colors along with white in my embroidery.

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“Heavenly Hydrangeas” will be available tonight (July 7, 2016) at 7:00pm CST, cindyricedesigns.com. You can find more information on this set at that time under the “Shop What’s New” tab.

Bye for now!

“Garden Princess”

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I crowned my Little Darling, Gina, the garden princess. Her grace never fails to shine through on the thousands of photos I’ve taken of her over the years. She’s a beauty, my oldest, and I am happy she’s a part of my ever growing Little Darling family.

Here she is modeling her new ensemble called “Garden Princess”.

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I love the violet-y pink shades in these two fabrics from the same collection. The border print is the same design as “Beauty in Blue” made for my Kaye Wiggs Gracie. The print has a totally different feel when done without the leaves and stems in green, doesn’t it? I like them both, though, no preference.

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I didn’t have the right shade of pink, so I knit Gina’s sweater in white mohair/silk then hand dyed it in a very, very light rosy pink dye bath. I think it dyed to the perfect shade and created a nice background for the embroidery.

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Here’s a close up of the embroidery.

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The accessories all came together perfectly for this ensemble.

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Gina has a bouquet put together just for you. It features baby’s breath, tiny off white blossoms, and a cool pink rose blossom. She tied her bouquet together with a bit of lace and pearl trim.

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“Garden Princess” will be available tonight (July 6, 2016) at 7:00 pm CST at cindyricedesigns.com. Look for more information under the “Shop What’s New” tab at 7:00 pm.