More destashing!

Big lot of fabrics – traditional and crazy quilting, trims, embroidery ribbon listed on eBay this week.  From a smoke-free home.

Crazy Quilt Fabrics:

Quilting Fabrics:

Craft Fabrics:

Trims (includes much more than pictured):

Lace:

Quilting/Craft Fabrics:

Knit (T-shirt) Fabric:

30’s Reproduction Quilting Fabrics:

Wool Felt:

Silk Embroidery Ribbon:

Cotton/Poly blend fabric:

Sofie

My new doll arrived yesterday! I’ve named her Sofie (with the Italian spelling since she’s supposed to be from Italy). Here she is in the crazy getup she arrived wearing:

And some photos after I changed her clothes:

She sure has a pretty face.

After comparing her to the dolls I’m selling, I’m really happy with my decision:

The big heads just don’t do it for me anymore

I’ve also decided not to  customize the J-dolls like I did with the Pullips.  As you can see, the body on the left (the type I would use if I changed her body), is much heavier, thicker, less delicate.  It does have a lot more range of poseability, but it also adds $25+ to the cost, and is labor intensive.

Plus, the doll on the right is on the table, while the one on the left was on a 1/2 inch high platform – so I think the new body would be too big for her.  My options for new bodies that are a cm or 2 shorter than the ones I had on the Pullips don’t have any more range of motion than her original body.

So I think I’m going to leave all these dolls as-is – no new wigs, either.  Just clothing changes.

My favorite thing about moving to the J-dolls?  They can fit in places that Pullip never could:

They also don’t tip over, can stand on their own, can hold more poses without having to prop up their heads, and generally are just much easier to display, pose and play with because of their smaller size.

Since I listed a LOT of stuff on eBay this week, and made a lot more $$ than I anticipated, I’ve already ordered several more dolls   So expect to see more dolly content in the future, including some attempts to make clothing for them.

Doll fever

I’m definitely obsessed with these new dolls, and I don’t even have one yet (tomorrow!!).

Here’s a great example of the dolls I’m selling (left) and the dolls I’m buying (right).  Same body, radically different heads.

So, now only to decide which dolls to buy first.  The one at the bottom is the one I’ve already ordered, the other 9 are all on my wish list!  I think the red head and purple head (?) are my 2 favorites.

Fickle, fickle, fickle

A while back, I discovered Pullips.   I was in LUV with all the pretty clothes people made them, all the awesome photo shoots people staged, and their amazing eyes.

I ordered my first, Eternia, because she was the cheapest one available, not because I really wanted a cream-puff looking bride doll:

I quickly learned about customizing the dolls, and gave her a body transplant (to an even more flexible body), and turned her into a blonde with a new wig:

Loving the way she turned out, I decided she needed a sister.  So I ordered “Craziia”, another Pullip with beautiful green eyes:

She got a new body and wig, too, though not as dramatic of a makeover:

I had plans for making them lots of clothes and staging photoshoots.  But, I lost interest.  They’ve sat on the shelf for a long time.

Now, their big heads bug me.  They are hard to pose, because you always have to balance a head that’s 3 times heavier than the body.  Their hair, while proportional to their heads, is always in the way of the tiny body.  The big heads mean they need a LOT more space to display.  They tip over really easily, risking damage to their fragile heads.

So, I’ve listed them on eBay.  The blonde is already sold, the red head will sell at or above the price I hoped for.  The wedding dress and the Scottish outfit are getting lots of traffic.  So I should make a nice chunk of change.

And what am I going to do with it?  Pay some bills?  Save it for a rainy day?  Of course not!  I’m going to buy some of my NEW obsession  – “J-doll” – by the same manufacturer.  She has a similar, improved body, and a proportional head.  Isn’t she gorgeous?

This one is already on her way to me (should be here by Friday!!). Once all of my eBay auctions are completed and paid for, I will be getting at least one more, I’ve already picked her out:

Big Destash!

Cleaning out a bunch of stuff that wasn’t garage sale material – mostly craft stuff and some doll stuff.

Listed on eBay.

Lots of cross stitch patterns and other stitching items.

Lots of Pullip clothes, Re-ment and a couple of Ginny dolls.

More doodling and playing

This fabric, created during my workshop a couple of weeks ago is a sunprint of 12 quarters on muslin:

Inspired by the small piece I worked on during the workshop:

I stitched “rays” coming out of all the circles:

I’ve used 4 or 5 different colorways of variegated DMC perle cotton 5. There are still a few rays to stitch, but I’ve also started couching them down with various colors of floss:

More playing with fabric paints

All painted with Pebeo Setacolor transparent paints on pfd cotton from Dharma Trading.

1. scrapbook paper stencil, 2. sun print ruined by bratty neighbor girls, 3. painted, 4. painted, 5. pscrapbook paper stencil, 6. stencil, 7. sunprint, 8. painted, 9. sunprinted and stenciled, 10. another sunprint ruined by naughty kids, 11. stencil with way too watery paint , 12. stencil

Most of these did not turn out the way I planned.  Aside from the 2 sunprints (#2 & #10) ruined when the bratty girls down the street ran off with them and threw them in a mud puddle behind some bushes  (boy did they take a while to find!), the colors and multiple layers never turned out how I thought.

In #1 – I thought the yellow over-painting would turn the red to orange, for example.  But apparently, once a layer of paint is dry, the colors don’t mix – the dry paint acts as sort of a resist to the new.  Same thing with #5, #6& #12.  #6 has a strange effect because I rinsed it before heat setting.  The paint that was totally dry stayed, but the damp paint partially rinsed away.

#3, #4 & #8 turned out like I planned – they’ll probably get more layers yet.

#11 I love, even though the stencil didn’t work out at all.  It still created a great pattern.

#7 I also love.  #9 I like a lot, but I wish the stenciled shapes were a bit lighter.  I need some white paint to make lighter tints, but that would take away the transparent-ness of the colors.

Koolaid dyeing yarn

A couple of weeks ago, I got some “Bare” sockyarn from KnitPicks.  I dyed up three hanks of it, plus three balls of Dale Baby Ull, with koolaid.

These first two I like a lot.  They’ve been re-wound and I love the subtle color variations.  Hopefully a couple of pairs of wonderful socks will eventually emerge from these.

1. Marigold - started as a very pale yellow Baby Ull.  Dyed with lemonade and a hint of orange koolaid.

2. Poppy - “Bare”, dyed with orange, a hint of lemonade, and a hint of strawberry.

3.  No name yet – strawberry, cherry, fruit punch.  I like the color.  Just need to untangle and re-wind it. So hard to photograph reds – there’s really more variation in this one.

4. No name – this one needs more work.  Mixture of grape, black cherry, strawberry.  I was going for more of a black cherry/blackberry sort of look.  I think I need to overdye with a lot more grape.

FFT #8 Round Robin First block done

My first experience with a Round Robin from the crazy quilting international yahoo group.

Came to me as:

After my work:

There are only a handful of seams and the patches are all rather large.  The block owner also wants to do some stitching, so I tried to do only 20% or so.  I figure it’s better to be a little more restrained on the first few blocks – I’d hate to do so much that the last person in the rotation can’t find a spot to work.

All this shiny fabric and thread is hard for me to photograph.

• The fly stitch on the left is in peach silk.  One side also is topped with colonial knots in 3 ply of DMC.
• The lower left patch has stitching in Caron Wildflowers with mother-of-pearl buttons and “pearl” beads.
• To the right of that, I’ve enhanced the blue flowers in the print with some wool stitching.
• Vertically along the light peach block is buttonhole in the same Wildflowers, with straight stitch above it in white silk.
• The final seam treatment on the right, starts with some white and peach lace, tacked down with yellow silk lazy daisies and some peach beads.

More random experimenting

Not much to say these days.  Finally getting caught up on the cleaning/laundry/dishes that fell by the wayside during my art workshop/garage sale/crazy workdays.

Done a little bit of playing around with some of my fabrics from the workshop.

This:

Became:

Not sure what I’m doing with it next, if anything. The muslin around the edges is there in case I want it in a hoop for stitching.

This:

Has become:

I might finish stitching it, or I might just rinse out the water-soluable pen and call done.