October's Meeting

We had our monthly meeting on Saturday and we worked on our Halloween project. We agreed at our last meeting we would all make a witch. The witches that were not completed were worked on while we chatted about everything that came to mind. The photo to the right is Jean's witch she named Prada. As you can see she is going to be a very fashionable witch, hence the name. She used a pattern designed by Julie McCullough. It's still in the construction stage and we can't wait to see it finished. Sandi chose to use a pattern designed by Patty Culea. She also worked on completing hers along with Vivian while we all chatted. I didn't get a photo of Vivian's doll this time but will have it in the next post when it's completed. I had finished mine and had it up for show & tell. I used a free pattern of a witches head used for a pin doll from Mary Tressler's site. The rest of the doll was my own. I call her my spider witch. Next Sandi suggested a pattern we should try. It's the free pattern offered by Judy Skeel for her challenge. We decided it will be our Christmas Holiday doll. It will be our project for December. Next month's project will be a doll made up with 2 colors picked from a bag. There was some interesting color combinations drawn . The pattern we will use is also a free pattern offered by Rivkah Rosenfeld called Francesca.

They should all turn out great.

September's Meeting

Our September meeting started with show & tell. This month's show & tell had quite a few dolls because we didn't meet last month. Some of us attended the Doll Day function which fell on the same date as our usual meeting. So during that break, we all have been busy making dolls. There's my Charmed Cobra and Ethiopian Queen in the photo on the right. The doll on the bottom left with the brown curly hair was made by Jean and the striped doll is also mine, both made from the Annie LaBouche pattern. At the bottom is Sandi's Etta Mae and friends. In the photo on the left. Sandi's Ethiopian Queen was added. We all had a good laugh listening to Jean's story about how she got Etta Mae fever. She blamed it all on me because I made them also and brought them to show & tell for a previous meeting. I'm glad I was able to get your creative juices flowing Sandi, you did a great job on all of them! At our last meeting I had mentioned some hats I had made a few years ago from an online class. I said I would bring them for them to see. Now I'll have to make dolls to wear these hats. Our project for this meeting was to make the How's My Hair? doll. It was a pattern from the July 2007 issue Soft Dolls & Animals magazine. We thought it would be a fun pattern to work on and it was. Four of us completed the doll and we decided we would submit it to the magazine.

Next on the agenda was my needle sculpting demonstration. I was asked to demonstrate to the members how to do needlesculpting. Sandi and Vivian wanted to learn how it's done to incorporate it in some of their future dolls. It was fun seeing how each face turned out. Nice job ladies! What we've decided to do for our next meeting is make a witch doll. Since it will be ghost and goblin season, why not? It doesn't have to be a typical witch so it will be interesting to see what we come up with. This concludes September's meeting. We had a lot of fun as usual.

July's Meeting

July's Meeting began as always with show and tell. We all brought in our completed mixed part teapot dolls from our last meeting. As you may recall we swapped parts we each made from different fabric and took them home to complete. Here are the finished pots. They all turned out lovely. From left rear to right is the pot made by Vivian then there's Sandi's pot. There's mine (Venus) and then Jean's. We all agreed it was a fun project. Sandi brought in a project she was working on which is turning out fabulous. I can't wait to see it finished. It is also a project I am looking forward to working on. It's the Ethopian Queen, a Kookie Davis pattern. Sandi is doing a fabulous job. Jean showed 2 dolls she completed since we last met which are adorable. She made a doll from the EttaMae pattern and one from the Annie LaBouche pattern both a free pattern designed by Kate Erbach. They are so cute!

Everyone has been busy, busy, busy. After taking a little snack break along with a little chit chat, Jean showed us her next project. It was a pattern from the July issue of Soft Dolls & Animals called How's My Hair? She showed us how she strip pieced enough fabric to fit the pattern pieces for the doll. The pattern called for either strip piecing or crazy piecing to add interest. It definitely looks like an interesting doll to make so we decided it will be a project we will all work on and have completed by our next meeting. Jean has hers already cut out stitched and ready to go. I guess we will all have to catch up. I can't wait to see how they all turn out.

June' Meeting

June's meeting was cancelled.

May's Meeting

We had our monthly doll club meeting yesterday and as always we started with show and tell. I brought in two of my latest projects which were made from a free pattern designed by Kate Erbach. She has named the pattern EttaMae. All of the ladies in the group fell in love with these two. Our project for this meeting was to make a cloth teapot. We used the teapot pattern designed by Sherry Goshon which was also used in one of her past challenges. What we decided to do to make the project a little more interesting and a little different, is we each made the parts of the teapot using different fabric with different colors. We each stuffed each part and wrapped the parts individually in tissue paper and labeled them. Once we got to the meeting, we put the parts in designated bags to mix them up. Each member then picked from the bags to each part of the teapot. Once we all had our parts we unwrapped them to see what we had to work with. It was quite interesting to see how they turned out. The photo below on the left is what Jean had to work with.

The photo on the right are the parts I picked. As you can see the fabric choices were vibrant and interesting; which was the whole idea for doing this project. We didn't just want to make a teapot doll. We wanted to make it interesting which I think we accomplished. They all came out pretty interesting. The dolls are not in their completed stage yet. This part was to see what we had to work with. It was lots of fun. Here's Vivian's doll all assembled.
Below is a group photo of the assembled dolls. From left to right is Jeans, Sandra's...she has even added some hair, Vivians, Zaida's and mine...Venus.

The next phase of this project will be to complete the doll. Each of us now have the parts we've taken home so we can add our personal touches. By our next meeting we will have the faces and the embellishments done for the finished product. It will be interesting to see how they all will look once completed. Our next meeting will be to have these done and to work on any UFO's we may have.