Wlydhare's Hollow

Orphans

Oh my goodness, what a BUSY summer it has been! I kept trying to find time to blog and life kept giving me one detour after another! Finally, things seem to be back in a sane rhythm again.

The chaos all centers around me setting up and getting my home business set up and running. And here I thought it would just be a walk in the park! Silly me!

But now, The Beast holds court in the front room, where I have a nice view of the front yard while I work. For machine embroidery geeks, this is the Babylock Entrepreneur with 10 needles. It sews up to 1000 stitches per minute and well, is a beast!

And, my business,E'Bellish, now has a website!

I hope for machine embroidery to be our prime income, but I have also been making jewelry out of fine silver, which I hope to sell in an Etsy shop once we are back from a trip to see my husband's family in the UK.

My biggest embroidery order, to date, has been jackets for a cruise group of 62 people! Let me tell you, the beast was running virtually day and night for ages! The cats were not amused! I had to stop in the evenings so the girls could do homework.

So, after all those waking hours working and working and working, I have been on a mini work vacation, since I can't start any big new orders between now and when we leave for Europe. As a reward, I am playing for a few days and working on craft orphans. You know, the projects you start and don't get around to finishing?

So my first orphan to work on is a doll kit to make a Hitty doll by Gail Wilson. The real Hitty in the book "Hitty: Her First Hundred Years" is all wood, but I was pretty sure I would carve a digit off, doing a doll that way. Gail has a version where the head, arms and legs are done in paper mache and painted to look like wood, and she has a cloth body. I was so nervous about painting her face. Generally, I avoid painting, it just is not very high in my artistic skill set. But I really wanted to make Hitty, so I made myself get past that fear and painted really, really, really slowly. And it worked!! The other challenging part was attaching her clothing body to her head and limbs. I didn't realize that would be so tricky! 

  

Then, feeling on a roll, I worked on my poor, neglected Block of the Month 2009 from Bunny Hill. Two months down now! At this rate, I will be done in another ten years! LOL! I do like how it turned out though.

Then finally, I had two jewelry projects that had been left only partially completed when the great embroidery projects came to my door. So I finished those two, with my first attempt at setting a stone. (I think the color was not quite right, but I will try again later.) I do like how the owls turned out though.

 
Next, I hope to dress poor Hitty, so she isn't cold this winter! Check back and I will post some pictures when it is finished. I also hope to post some fun vintage fall and Halloween graphics soon.

Happy Fall!

 

The Dollhouse Resolution

There are a lot of balls to juggle, as of late. As I mentioned in my last blog, I am working on launching my machine embroidery business. I feel progress is good in that area. I have come up with a name, E' Bellish, ordered business cards, reserved URLs for a website and am filling out the small business applications for the city, while working on getting up to speed on the software I need to know.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, who has a little B&B in France is having problems with the company who has been providing info on his B&B, as well as setting up reservations. So he asked if I can make a website for his property. I have not designed a website from top-to-bottom in over 5 years, so I am suspecting I will be a bit rusty. Just to be clear, I am not complaining, I just need to share a bit of the chaos. *grin*

I have had to really cut back on my crafty stuff, which is really rough, but realistic if I am going to successfully launch E' Bellish. So Sunday I block as my day of relaxation and give myself permission to just play. Yesterday I chose to spend some quality time on my dollhouse, which I have talked about in past blogs.

Rewiring was done for the electrical and I was able to get the lights to work! Woohoo! So I re-wallpapered the kitchen and re-did the trim around the window in the kitchen.

Then I added the baseboard trim downstairs. Finally I was able to decorate with all the goodies I have been collecting for the last 10 years. Some of the items in the house were made by me. Many were made by very skilled artisans in the world of miniatures.

For instance, I assembled and upholstered the arm chair on the left, but the beautiful needlework on the footstool was done by my friend Jo Berbiglia. She used a single strand of silk floss and her work is amazing. The clock on the wall was made by a man in Spain, unfortunately, I can't recall his name, but his work is stunning. And the spinning wheel was made by another friend in our miniature group, named Al Cushman. By the way, please think good thoughts for him. He is elderly and is in the hospital for severe pneumonia.

In the kitchen, the sink was made by a pair of ladies who specialize in kitchen items. Their business is called Hammer and Smith. The stove is just regular dollhouse stock that you can find from most dollhouse shops. My favorite part is collecting all the details that turns it from a house to a home.

And I especially like vintage kitchen goodies. I can almost smell the cinnamon!  The table I also assembled and painted. The drawer really opens and closes.

I think it was Tasha Tudor, the artist and writer, who really got me into the joy and imagination a dollhouse can bring.

I want it to be a place I would want to live, with tea and sewing next to my comfy chair, the ticking of the family clock and the warm glow of a fireplace.

Well it is Monday now, and time to get back to responsibilities, work and chores. I hope you have enjoyed the little tour of the downstairs of my dollhouse and I wish you happiness and contentment till next we chat.
 

Dolls and Discoveries

I found another estate sale I just had to go explore. It was a home where the woman had been an avid doll collector and maker. She had a kiln and about a zillion molds and hundreds of dolls I am getting into these estate sales, you never know what you might find.

The coolest thing I found was a copy of a doll I had been given to me at Christmas when I was 10 years old. My mother gave her too me, along with the book Hitty. Actually, I would not even remember the year, but my mother helpfully inscribed it with the date and occasion. I have actually tried to find a copy of the doll for years, with no luck.But there, at this sale, I found her again! Made a few years after mind, with a dress in a different print, but otherwise exactly my long lost doll and she only cost $3! It must have been my day!

In addition to Hitty, I also found several other dolls I couldn't pass by. Does this me one of those nutty ladies that have a house filled with nothing but dolls? I find that creepy, but I do treasure the dolls I own. How does that work out? I do avoid commercial dolls that are sold in pink aisles of Toys R Us. I like traditional and handmade, because there is artistry and love in the making, not just a "Made in China" stamped on a rubber butt.

That said, someone please put me down if I start to collecting crying clown dolls with music boxes, okay?

The little boy on the right is about 3-1/2 inches tall and all three are jointed so they can stand or sit. They were each only $1 - how can you pass up a deal like that?

As to my doll house, I have made progress, but I ran into a snag today. I was trying to test the electrical system and install little outlets and found most of the power did not work. I find "juice" near the the point the cord is plugged in, so that was good.

The light is a test probe. But unfortunately, as you might notice, I had to strip back the wallpaper to confirm I was properly hitting the connections. Now I have to strip the whole wall and re-paper it, which will not be a quick project since the glue is very efficient. After much fussing, I found out why I was no getting power in the rest of the house.

I realized when I had been putting in the wall paper, I had run the x-acto knife down the corner to clean it up. Duh! I cut through the wiring in the process. How brilliant is that?

However, I have installed the floor and the center wall and I am ready to put in baseboard once the electrical issues are resolved. So I have an order in for more electrical tape to "patch" my little boo-boo. I am still hoping to make my goal of finishing the downstairs by the end of the month. I hope this little snafu has not ruined that deadline.

I would love to hear about the projects you are working on! Please share!

Knitting

So, armed with Knitting for Dummies, online video demonstrations and a stubborn streak, I have started my knitting adventure.

I am too anal for my own good sometimes though. I think I casted on 4 or 5 times before I was happy with the spacing and tension!

And then I practiced knitting, purling and increasing for a few hours and did even more ripping out, but eventually I got the hang of that as well.

I then learned to increase and went to change to another color and things started to go "pear shaped" as my British husband likes to say. Loops slipped and I didn't get them back on the needles correctly and then I knitted when I should have pearled. *Blah!* But it was all good practice and I decided to start over with a different yarn I like the colors on better and will use the mistakes I made as a learning experience!

Meanwhile, when not working on knitting, I decided to finish up a miniature room box which I stated a few years back. There were only a few things I had left to do, but I kept putting them off. So I finally got to work and finished it and the doll to go inside (she has been sitting around hairless for like 5 years!) Here is the finished result:

 

 

 

And what is the rest of the house doing while I work?

 

Minux

 

Milkyway

Finished!

Meet Mandy, finished and modeling her new dress, which is the same color as her favorite food, chocolate! I definitly had some challenges on the way. The pattern I had was not the best for the clothing and in the end I just put them aside and made my own patterns for her dress, panties and shoes.

She was a lot of fun to make and will definitly not be the last one I make!

And then there was hair!

I must admit, I was really scared of trying to do her hair. But I realized the longer I put it off, the more likely it would end up a UFO (UnFinished Object). So I bit the bullet, found a great online tutorial about doing yarn hair on cloth dolls and just decided to try it. Worst case, I could get more yarn and start over, right?

But in the end, it worked and I think she looks great. I also sewing on her felt eyes (they had just been sorta sitting there before). And, I decided her name should be Mandy.

Next step, to make Mandy some proper undies and clothing!

 

   

Progress

I continue to make progress on the cloth doll I am making...

 

 

 

Making a Cloth Doll

When I was about 7 years old, money was very tight. My father had left my mother and she was trying to support herself and three daughters, the youngest still a todder with typing jobs. Needless to say, Christmas was lean, but she tried to make it very special with homemade gifts. For me, she decided to make a doll pattern she had saved from the 1965 November Woman's Day magazine. The doll she made, Annie, ended up being one of my most beloved toys (along with a special teddybear) and she holds a very special place in my heart.

I still have her, she is a bit grungy for the years, but she is almost 40 years old! Seeing her still makes me smile; I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder!

So yesterday I went to the fabric store and picked out a nice peach colored cotton fabric and started work on making a doll from the same pattern my mom used those many years back. Why? Well I have never made a doll before, and I have always wanted to try my hand at it, and I also thought it would be neat to make a 'sister' for Annie.

 

So I copied each pattern piece onto printer paper, adding a seam allowance. ( I hate when patterns make you do that, it is so tedious to add!)

Last night I pinned and cut out all the pieces and today I sewed the head and body and stuffed them.

 

So far, so good... It is going faster than I expected, but I suspect the clothing will not be quick!

Oh, and on the tea towel I made, I decided to add some gingham and rick rack to the bottom and I think it really finished it up nicely and added to the vintage look.