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

Green!

I was going through some photographs from this past summer and came across these from July. Back in March, my daughter died her hair her hair vivid pink

This past July, she found a very green dress at a vintage clothing store and decided to dye her hair to match.


While I was taking pictures, the Twenty Pound Tabby, decided he was in need of a belly rub. Here he is in his best "come hither" look.


He got his belly rubbed and then he got cuddled.

It's Pinker!

Before she left for college, my daughter decided that her hair wasn't pink enough and dyed it again. She's happy with the final result.

And Speaking of Dyeing...

While I was dyeing beads, this is what my older daughter did to her hair today.

More Flowery Things

I have one heck of a flowery fabric stash, so I made up this little jewelry bag to put some of my overwhelming jewelry stash in. I think I'll try and put some of these in the TabbyToo shop and see if anyone would like one. It has eight little pockets in it to keep things separate.



I've also been dyeing my own lucite flower beads, after purchasing some that I wasn't too please with. Since I've been dyeing fabric and fiber for decades, and have a fantastic collection of good dyes, I thought I'd try dyeing lucite.
I ended up with nice, smoothly dyed beads that the color stays fast on even when washed in hot water. Here' some earrings that have a violet color I'm particularly fond of. These will end up in the shop too.


These deep red ones were dyed by me and are already in the shop. I've got some gorgeous burgundies, lavenders, blues, pinks, peach, rusts, mauves and grays to make up into jewelry. It's lots of fun.

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.

A New Handwoven Scarf

Chris has woven another new rayon scarf. The warp is hand dyed by me in turquoise and purple and the weft is black. It'll be in the Etsy shop in a day or two.


Update: It's in the shop here and this is what Chris has to say about it:

A handwoven rayon scarf with a unique twill pattern. This is what happens when a "pattern person" gets carried away. This scarf is woven using a progressing twill pattern on a purple and turquoise hand-dyed warp with a black weft. The result: an eye catching scarf with a wonderfully soft hand. It measures 7 1/2 inches wide by 45 inches long with an additional 3 inch twisted fringe.

Another update - it sold.

New Scarf on the Loom

My spouse weaves scarves using warps that I hand dye. Here's one scarf almost completed on the loom. The warp is purple and turquoise hand dyed rayon and the weft is black rayon. He has two more scarves to weave on this warp before he can take it off the loom.
The loom is a 44 inch Louet Spring 8 harness.

Pouches from Hand Dyed Fabric

I love to hand dye fabric, and was wondering what else I could make with it besides little doll pins and such. I was looking for something that didn't take hours and came up with these pouches.


Since I don't use a purse, I usually have a wallet in my back jeans pocket. But there are times when I don't have a pocket, or I need to carry something that doesn't really fit into a pocket or is too fragile to sit on, like a lucet. During those times, I'll hang a pouch off my belt.