My First Art Doll

I recently purchased an online class called Southern Sass by Kecia Deveney.  She is an amazing artist and her art dolls are incredible so I couldn’t wait to start this class.

I have to admit that I am the worst at buying classes and either never taking them at all, never finishing them or finishing them and never applying anything that I learned in class.  I shudder to think of the amount of money I’ve spent on online art classes over the years, but I wouldn’t have learned any of what I know now without some of them, so some of the money was well spent.

Anyway, back to that art dolls.  I watched some of the videos and then procrastinated and finally got started last week.  It is so fun learning something new and getting out of my comfort zone, not to mention it’s a great way to use the fabric paint I bought years ago and put a dent in my stash of fabric as well.

Here are a few pictures of my progress so far:

After I made a pattern I liked and transferred it onto muslin, I started creating the eyes, ears, mouth and nose.  This was harder than I expected and took a while, especially when it came to the hand stitching part.  I spent quite a while getting those pieces the way I wanted them, but I’m really pleased how they turned out.

I then painted the face with colors that coordinated with some of the fabrics I had picked out for the body beforehand.  I have pinned the facial features in place, but haven’t sewn them down yet.

Here I have laid out all of the fabric pieces I plan on using over the pattern.  You can’t seen the shape of the body yet because this is how you do it at first. I haven’t gotten far enough to know what happens next, but I’m excited to see what she looks like after all the fabric is sewed in place and trimmed down.  I also chose the saying I wanted to have and stamped the words out and then sewed them onto felt.  I don’t like the stamps I have so I ordered some different ones that hopefully work better with paint than these did.  I think these would be great with ink, but they weren’t the best with paint.

Well I’m going to get back to it and hope this all turns out how I hope it will.

Till next time.

Raw Edge Applique’ Hand Stitched Journal Cover

This one is almost ready to be turned into a journal cover.  The pieces making up the flowers and butterflies were all stitched by hand.  Now it just needs some more embroidery around the edges of the flower petals and stems and then it will be time to assemble the cover.

blue and white floral journal cover
Hand Stitched Blue and White Floral Journal Cover

Slow Stitched

Fabric Scraps

Trying Something New

I’ve never been particularly great at hand sewing.  Truth be told, I actually despised it to the point of avoiding it as much as possible.  That all changed after taking a needle book class by Roxy Creations, which can be found here:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/670893598/online-course-petit-needlbook-with-pdf?ref=shop_home_active_29&pro=1

The books she created, completely by hand stitching, were gorgeous in their simplicity.  Another thing about this process that intrigued me was that they were portable.  This was something you could pack in a bag and work on while you were enduring your child’s weekly practices.  Her techniques could also be used to create journal covers as well. 

After watching her videos numerous times, I finally got out a fabric bundle I had purchased at Tuesday Morning and decided to take the plunge.  Auditioning fabric scraps for inclusion and placement is more difficult than I expected, but I managed to put something together.  

Now it’s time to thread the needle and get started.  

More to come!