My first Hitty

I made myself a Hitty doll for a Christmas present.  I sent off for some wood carving blanks, but couldn't wait for them to arrive in the mail.  This is a cloth and paper clay Hitty.  I am not telling her that she isn't made of wood.  She thinks that she is made of wood.

 

I made her exactly 6.5 inches tall.

Helping me celebrate the holidays.  This is her first Christmas.

She already has friends.

I figured out what to do with my doll shards.

I decided to try my hand at cotton spun ornaments.  I started with little doll shards like this one:

I bought the shards from a lady who had ordered them in bulk on ebay.  They had been buried in the mud of Thuringia, Germany, behind old doll factories for many, many years.  Most of them are from the turn of the century. Some of them had Thuringian dirt in them - very romantic.  Thuringian dirt.

First, I painted the heads and put some finish on them so that they wouldn't chip.

Then I made wire armatures for the bodies.  Next, I wrapped the armatures with cotton roving, which I got on ebay.   Here's what it looked like at this stage:

I need to work on making the cotton more even.  Oh well.  This was my first attempt.  I'm also going to try different sources for cotton roving, to see if they vary in quality and texture.  After the wrapping, I painted the cotton with thinned acrylic craft paint.  I've also read that you can dye the cotton.  That would probably be very pretty.  Then I glued on the heads with tacky glue and decorated the painted cotton bodies with little bits of fabric, wool roving, crepe paper, buttons, and lace.  Then I sprayed them with glitter spray to make them festive.   They range in size from 2" - 5".  Here are my Thuringian shards, transformed into little holiday children:

If you want to give cotton spun ornaments a try, but you have no idea how to start, Martha Stewart has a couple of tutorials that helped me:
Cotton spun Easter bunny
and
Lucy's ornaments

Also, do image searches for cotton spun ornaments and you'll come up with plenty of photos of adorable ornaments.

I haven't ordered anything from this website yet, but it looks like they have LOTS of spun ornament supplies: Blumchen and Company

Happy Holidays!

What I've been doing the past few days...I must be nuts!

Last holiday season, I went to Edyth's house and saw her darling feather trees with her dollies sitting around them and I was green with envy.  I started poking around the internet and found a great tutorial on making feather trees - it's here.  I ordered supplies from this website.  Here's my tiny little tree!

Don't the feathers look like pine needles?  I was so excited!  For the base, I have a 2 inch wooden cube that I'm going to paint.  I plan to make a bigger tree because Edyth's was bigger and I'm a copycat.   Here's what her trees look like.


Merry Christmas!

Tiny Christmas Dolls!

Here are some little gift dolls that I just made. This time, I covered the paper clay heads with a nice cotton knit that I got from Susie McMahon. It's good stuff!

December Dolls

The one who is dressed is named Eulalie because I'm reading "Gone with the Wind" and I saw the name in the book. I didn't make the dress. I found it at Goodwill Blue Hanger for a quarter. It seems older. The lace is cotton and the seams are from an older machine. Also, the fabric has an interesting, funky, geometric print. Her pretty little slip is from Edyth O'Neill's booth in an antique mall in Fredericksburg, Texas. The lace is so pretty. I'm going to work on the other doll's clothes this week. I think her dress will be purple calico, but I'm not sure. My task for the week is to learn how to do cartridge pleating on this dress.

Angel for my mother

She's supposed to be an angel. I found the fabric in my tub of scraps. The green with red poinsetta scrap had been in my collection since the late 70's, when we lived in Dallas.