Tiny Handmade Mermaid Dolls

Almost every year I make hand dyed ornaments for sale at the Boulder Handweavers Guild sale. These ornaments are actually tiny little cloth dolls. Each one is cut out of a tightly woven cotton cloth, sewn on my 1948 Singer 15-91 and then stuffed with polyfil. Then each one is hand dyed, painted and beaded. Depending on what the ornament is, other embellishments such as hair or wings are added. While these are quite small, each one takes quite a bit of time to make. The other day I noticed that it took 4 hours just to sew and stuff two mermaid ornaments. I don't know how long it then takes to dye, paint, bead and hair them yet, but I know it's quite a while. Here are 4 new mermaids I just finished:

Mermaid 1

Mermaid 2

Mermaid 3

Mermaid 4

Kitty Fairy and Mermaid in Shop

I recently added a kitty fairy and a mermaid to my Etsy shop. Kitty is here and the mermaid is here.

Tutorial: Making a Tiny Doll Part 1 - using a Freezer Paper Pattern

This is a tutorial for making a simple small doll using a pattern made with freezer paper. The pattern is in the previous post:
Free Doll Pattern

I've been making small dolls virtually my whole life, but when I discovered the use of freezer paper about a decade ago, it made my life quite a bit easier. Freezer paper has a plastic coating on one side that enables it to temporarily stick to fabric without leaving any residue when removed and the pattern can be used over and over again. I have some freezer paper patterns that are 5 years old and have been used hundreds of times, although they are getting a bit ratty with use.


Freezer paper can be found in the grocery store and comes in a roll. Some cloth doll supply companies even sell it in nice flat sheets that can be used in your printer.


I draw all my pattern prototypes directly on the freezer paper, but you can see through it enough to trace a pattern on it too. Draw the pattern on the paper side of the freezer paper, not the plastic side.


Once the pattern is drawn on the freezer paper, cut the pattern out right along the line. This will be your sewing line.


Double the fabric, wrong sides out. Since we're using a fairly hot iron, I recommend a cotton fabric. My favorite fabrics are Southern Bell and the Egyptian cotton fabric sold at Joann's Fabrics because they have a nice tight smooth weave that makes it easier to turn tiny cloth dolls without seam blow outs.
Iron the pattern plastic side down onto the wrong side of the fabric using a dry iron. Now, some irons get hot enough to melt the plastic coating on cotton setting, so if you have a hot iron, use wool setting. My old iron doesn't melt the plastic even on the hottest setting, but it's old and well used. If in doubt, use a cooler setting and if the pattern doesn't stick, bump up the heat to the next level.


Let the pattern cool on the fabric.


Sew right up along the edge of the pattern using a tiny stitch. I set my old Singer to stitch setting 15. Leave an area open for turning as indicated on the pattern.

When done sewing, peel the pattern off and cut out the doll leaving about 1/8 inch seam allowance. Clip curves, turn, stuff and embellish however you'd like.

Next tutorial will be about turning and stuffing a tiny doll.

Free Doll Pattern

Here's a tiny doll pattern I just made for the tutorial that will be my very next post. It makes a tiny little doll just under 3 1/2 inches tall. Click on the image to bring up the full size pattern and print it at 200 DPI.

A Dragon and a Kitty

Here's a couple more that went into the Boulder Handweavers Guild sale. I don't usually do blue dragons, but I did one this year, and a tabby kitty fairy.

The Boulder Handweaver's Guild Sale

I've been busy as heck getting ready for the Boulder Handweaver's Guild Sale, which will be in Longmont, Colorado from this Wednesday until the following Tuesday. I even pulled some items from my Etsy store for it.
I modified the style of a few of my items and also added a few new styles. The Kitty Fairies, which were brand new to the FootHills Holiday Art Mart a few weeks ago are also being entered in the Guild Sale.


The mermaids and fairies have had a hair style change from previous years beaded hair and now have long flowing locks made of a beautiful art yarn.


And I've added a brand new design - a horse:


There will also be dragons, fish, dinos, moons, and of course cats!

The Boulder Handweaver's Guild Sale.

Foothills Art Center Holiday Art Market

I've been busy as heck getting stuff ready for two shows, one of which is the Foothills Art Center Holiday Art Market in Golden, Colorado. I put a board full of hand dyed cloth pins and quite a few ornaments there and some of my kitty pot holders.



This is the first time I've ever entered my kitty fairies in a show.

My board full of pins is quite colorful.


The show runs until December 30th.
FootHills Art Center, Golden Colorado

New Dolls from Nifty Knits

I just received some genuine English morris dancers from Nifty Knits in the UK. She knitted up two little morris dancers to match my two full sized, living, breathing, stick whacking, hankie waving, bell clad morris dancers - Chris and Emily. The doll's baldrics even have a tiny version of the Maroon Bells Morris badge with the Maroon Bells mountains on it. I love the beard on the one that looks like Chris.


If you're at all curious about morris dancing, we have a website for the Maroon Bells Morris here.

And if you'd like a little morris dancer of your own, or another cool knitted item, Nifty Knits can be found here.

Bat Cats and Kitty Cats

Today, I had "help" while trying to photograph my newest bat cat ornament for my Etsy shop. Both Donny and Eric insisted in inspecting my little bat cat while I was taking its picture.
First to inspect and hog the camera was Donny, the twenty pound tabby:

Then Eric had to get a sniff in and thoroughly inspect the ornament:


This is the little bat cat that they were so curious about. You can find him in my Etsy store here.

Finally Another Doll Treasury

It had bee a while since I'd made an Etsy treasury featuring art dolls, so I did one tonight. You can find it here until Thursday evening.

The Cloth Doll Design Process - Part 2

This will a relatively short post since all I did was add some bat wings to black "bat" cat dolls for Halloween. I resized the bat wings from my dragon pattern to fit the cat and that was it.


I do plan on designing fairy wings for this cat pattern soon, as well as a more complex design for painting the face and body.

You can find this little black bat cat here.

The Cloth Doll Design Process - Part 1

I'm going to start posting a bit about actually making my pins, ornaments and dolls.

Recently, I was inspired to make some kitty fairies. I make cats, I make fairies - so it's not a very big stretch to make kitty fairies. First, I need to draw up some new patterns.


The above is a first attempt, and since I did it on a receipt for a sale, I photoshopped out the recipient's address. I tend to use whatever scrap I can find laying around to save paper.



Here, the resulting first prototypes. Ugh. Sometimes I get it right the first time, but usually I need to modify the pattern. The standing cat is too tall and skinny, and I really don't like that one leg. The other one is way too long and skinny and those back legs! How did they get bent like that? The tail is too long and blunt and the legs need to taper more.


Now I have a tubbier standing kitty that reminds me more of my 20 pound tabby and I like the overall look of the flying kitty, except the back legs are too tapered. I think I'll also make a slightly slimmer standing kitty, but keep the tubby one too.


Here's the final two kitties. I think I'll keep these. Next - the wings.

A New EGADS Treasury

I just got a brand new Treasury on Treasury West on Etsy and filled it with EGADS members. EGADS stands for Etsy Guild of Art Dolls and Such.
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=21139

A FAE Treasury

I was in the mood for a fantasy treasury so I created one from FAE team items and I focused on dolls.
I was spoiled for choice - will have to do another one soon.

There are EGADS and DAM members in it too.

It expires Sunday:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=59954

Update: It turns out this was the last treasury to expire on the old server so it was the only one on it for a bit. It got over 800 hits!

A new Kitty Ornament

I finished up another new kitty ornament/doll and put him up on Etsy. He's done in some of my favorite colors - blues and greens with just a touch of purple on the feet and tail. I wish the highly metallic bright shiny Lumiere paint showed up better in the picture. He's listed here.

The Fairy and her Diary

Back in 2005 I entered a challenge where the doll had to have a story to go with it. I came up with this little brown fairy for that challenge. She was actually the prototype, but since she turned out reasonably well, I entered her instead of the next generation fairy because she fit into a story my spouse Chris came up with.

After drawing up the pattern and trying out various incarnations of bodies, legs and such, this doll was my first result of all the parts going together in a satisfactory way. Usually, at this point, I don't go any further with the prototype and just go on to the final doll but I had put enough time into her I thought I'd try and get a doll out of her. Since she was done in white muslin, I decided to try dying her with procion dyes after I put her together, which is not the way I would recommend dyeing a doll if you want a consistent color throughout. So, there are some interesting markings on her legs and arms, but it seems to go with her overall earthy look.

Next, I worked on her clothes. Her bodice is made of some kind of fake-a-suede and took several iterations to get it to fit just the way I wanted. It has tiny eyelets all up the front which I found in the scrap booking section of the hobby store. Putting those on the bodice was a bit of a challenge.


Her boots are also made of imitation suede with some painted embellishments and the same tiny eyelets. I looked at a pair of ice skates to get the general idea of how to do them.


The hair is made of mohair locks, carefully dyed using jacquard acid dyes and then needle felted on.


The wings are also hand dyed.


I couldn't come up with panties that suited her, so she's pantyless under her skirt. This inspired the story, a diary entry, on how she lost her painties.

"June 22
Dear Diary,
Oh baby, what a party that was last night. Everyone, who’s anyone, was there including Oberon and what’s her name, Titania. Sure hope none of her fairy spies go around reading diaries of young fairies. And then there was that satyr that came in about half way through the evening. Oh my! What a buck! And what a sweetheart, we talked and drank and danced into the morning. And then we went back to his place. He, he, he."...

For the rest of the entry, see this pdf:
Brown Fairy's Diary