Doll Club Christmas Party, 2011

The best part of Christmas is time spent with family and friends.  This year I'm especially grateful for my dollclub friends who have given me so much emotional and practical support during this difficult year.  Love you guys!

Needle felted Santa ornament

Doll club today - yipee! And this years Christmas present is a brown bag santa under 6".  I love to needlefelt, largely because it is fast.  I'd read somewhere to use a styrofoam ball as a base and I tried that this time.  I was not pleased with using it for the head as I found it hard to get a really smooth look to the head AND it dulled my felting needle!  Last time I try that one! I'm off now to bake brownies for the meeting.

Textile Tarts Summer outing

My doll club, the Textile Tarts, holds a luncheon in June before taking the summer off. We gathered at our president's (Bobbie) house and the weather was nice enough for us to gather out on the deck. Great turnout, excellent food and lots of fun.

This past weekend was spent doing my favorite things with my favorite people; we had Adele Sciortino come to the Textile Tarts to teach her wonderful Creative Costuming class. An intense two days selecting colors and fabrics and trims (decisions, decisions) making flowers (more decisions), playing with angilina fiber and tyvek and Shiva paintsticks (yet more decisions), then draping and shaping and taking it all off again (I have committment issues - actually it is all those dang decisions!), and of course, running around seeing what everyone else was doing. Day 2 I was there extra early to begin anew and I was not even close to the first to arrive. Adele demo'd a number of really cool tools, which I HAD to own. I bought a tool to help make ribbon roses - in about half the time, a thread burner and a pleating mat - I've want one of those forever. Also some really cool material that, when sewed to your fabric and steam heated, shrinks and bubbles and textures the fabric in really cool ways. Yea, I'm sorry I'm not unpacked yet, but Adele has all these cool thing on her website (http://www.costumesandtrim.com/ & http://www.adelesciortino.com/)- at least she said she did, I don't dare go look, at least not until next payday! More pics below - enjoy -

So many tricks to make hats1

Busy people making costumes!