Playing with Dolls

I wanted to post some photos of a super fun little project I completed earlier this year.

Each January our EGA chapter hosts a workshop that does something requiring a needle and thread. . . but usually a little outside of traditional embroidery.

This year our guest teacher was beading instructor Cathy Helmers, who taught a 3-dimensional beading class.  You can see some of Cathy's work here.  We could choose either a little fantasy animal (called a snootie) or an art doll.

The stuffed fabric doll and snootie forms were premade (complete with the cabochon doll face), and we were each allowed to select from a great selection of fun beads.

I chose the doll was thrilled that I completed her over the winter.  Here she is in all her glory:

Back view (love the wild and crazy hair!):

And here's a super close up that shows the underlying fabric.  Deciding what to do was a challenge for me (at heart I'm a counted thread embroiderer).  But I'm really happy with the large diagonal motif across the front and back.  I think the brown textured beads were the key here.  They provided EXACTLY the right amount of color and texture contrast.  And I went all out and added the tiny pearls all over where there were little white dots on the underlying fabric.

Taking Stock

After getting the stitching on the ground fabric completed, the next steps involve attaching various detached elements to create the final picture.  I'd long since forgotten exactly how much had been done on these small elements before the project went into the great big WIP pile.

I was happily surprised to find that most of the nine required pink petals and over half of the woven detached sepals were complete and ready to go.  Over the past several days, I've made the rest of those elements. . . most of which you can see on my little embroidery hoop below.  The petals are made of wire couched and then bottonhole stitched to a ground, then outlined with split stitch, followed by two layers of satin stitch.  The final touch is the five straight stitches in light pink.  I will cut the individual petals out as I need them to avoid the danger of them getting lost.  The sepals are just wire wrapped with silk thread. . . over / under / over / under until the required length is reached.

I've started the attaching process, and two additional buds are almost complete.  Completing each bud involves working two woven sepals on the ground fabric, then inserting three detached sepals. . . covering the bud with light green satin stitch, then finally working three wrapped lines over each buds.  The remaining three buds / flowers are flowers beginning to emerge from their buds, so in addition to the green sepals, they will have one or more of the little pink petals.

Next goal:  Complete the plant and get ready to move on to the butterfly and bugs.