Facing faces...

I think that sometimes the hardest thing to do is paint a face. Specially when you have got so far in the process of the doll that you could mess it up big time. I always get paralysed for a few days before I pick up the courage to face the face.
This doll was extra hard for some reason.
I had such a vivid picture in my mind that I was worried that it just wouldn't turn out the way I wanted it to. A lot of the time what is in my head isn't what comes out of my hand. Does that make sense?
Thankfully she did turn out the way I wanted her to. Actually she turned out better! I always have the intention to write down exactly what colours I use and where I use them. And I do start to write but then I get temporarily moved of in to a different world where drawing is all that matters and I end up having no idea what colours I have or haven't used in the pile of pencils that have accumulated infront of me. And so yet again, the chances of ever creating something similar with the same colours is out of the window and half way down the field....

I guess that is why they call these dolls "one of a kind" as even the artists that create them in the first place can't duplicate them!!!

W.I.P

Work in progress or should I say "wings in progress"??!!

After much tweaking of Protea's pattern I am now reasonably happy and have started a new doll. As yet she has no face (and no name) but I am really happy with her pose. I took ages of me sitting infront of a big mirror trying out the poses my self to see if the looked natural or not. I probably looked a right charlie!

I think I will deviate from my use of mohair for hair and use this rather fun yarn that I found instead. It's quite "slinky" and has a nice fall to it. I also wanted to do BIG dragon wings for her. I have spent ages thinking about how to make light weight dragon-ish wings. Can't make them to heavy as it will topple the doll backwards and if you want BIG wings they have to be very light. So a bit of wire, some grey organza, some imagination and a bit of FME and I'm starting to get a look that I like. I think I'll be adding some paint too. And maybe melt the edges to give them a crinkly look.

Oh and I knitted a stripy sock..... Love stripy socks! Still got the other one to do. :O)

Gone skiing...

No dollmaking or quilting today. Instead we spent a good 5 hours chasing each other down a ski slope! We are quite lucky in that we have a small ski slope only 20 minutes drive away from where we live so we have been spending a day every weekend there for quite a few weeks now. I love to ski and so do the rest of the family. Today turned out to be a gorgeous winters day with only a couple of degrees C minus, blue sky, sunshine and a perfect slope. On the photo are Megan and Gwen both looking very relaxed. I'm jiggered now though! :O)

Hanna's birthday present!

I got this lovely book called "Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts" of my mum Xmas. It's one of those books where you just want to drop everything and start a new project. Being an engineer I do find these kind of patterns fascinating. So I started a smallish project. No need to kill myself and go overboard is there?

A posh pillowcase for a first testrun. And having my little sisters birthday coming up I though this would be a good pressie! They have just addad a new bedroom to their house and decorated it so I used the same colours on the pillowcase as they have used in the room. Black, white and green.

I made the pillowcase in 8 bits. 8 triangles to start with that are then sewn in to 4 rectangles. Then you have to decide what pattern you want. Very tricky.... which pattern to choose???

They all turn out so different! I spent ages sitting on the floor moving them about to see which one I liked best. In the end I settled for the one below here. I'm not quite finished yet as you can see. I still have to quilt the pillowcase and then bind it. Luckily Hanna doesn't know I have a blog yet so she can't peek!!