Toys arrived.

The missing elements to Dollmaking have arrived and await my very enthusiastic attack. I also, in preparation, spent the weekend gathering all things I have tucked away for Dolls. I have wool roving, baskets of dress fabrics, odd artsy needlepoint, strange and wonderful yarn for hair and my favorite patterns I made so long ago.

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I cant wait to start but to do so means I need the day cleared of everything else. Every artsy person has a process, mine is to clear the day of everything and everyone and then dive into the art with music filling the air in the studio.

And how I miss dressmaking, the old fashioned cut-it-right-out-of-the-fabric dressmaking. With Dolls I have no limits, no one worrying, no one elses preferences to consider. Just me and what comes of the fabric. Again, I can’t wait. This is my happy place.

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But for now…..Yay! The last of my things arrived, I am poised to begin as soon as a clear day comes. Well, it won’t really “come”. I will have to smash everything out of the way to clear a day to have serenity and peace to drown in dollmaking.

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I cant wait.

..as fingertips caress the woven threads before me..

I adore fabric. I love its variety of textures, its courseness or silkiness, its softly fallen drape or its stiff as a board stubbornness. I adore the brightly colored cottons and the faded, muted tones of old linens. I adore the heavy weight fabrics that land with a thud onto the cutting table and the soft silks that blow away on the breeze that sneaks in through the window. As a designer, I love to blend them in their many weights and tones, like the sum of parts, like an artists palette, I blend and paint them into a new choir of voices, more beautiful together then alone. I hope I have given each piece a richer voice then it would have had alone.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you find peace in your day and the nightime to come.
~Susannah

Doll Clothes;Dresses of Our Keepers.

What is it about Dollclothes?
No matter how old we become, there is kinship with the dolls of our childhood. There is comfort in their prescense and comfort in the clothes they wore. We all have them tucked away somewhere; Barbie’s gown, Betsy’s blankie, someones lost shoe, all bring tugs to our heart. And why not? It’s deserving. These pieces of stuffed muslin, cast plaster and vinyl were our first friends, the first receivers of our whispered dreams, the first ears to hear our cries and displeasure at the world around us. No one knew us, like our Dolls. They carried our heart and feelings until,well, it wasn’t that we outgrew them…no, none of us did. We simply became too old to carry them publicly. So we quietly, thoughtfully, and regretfully began to set them aside. But they remained our keepers. They are the ones who still and will always be there in the night ready to listen, always agreeing, while wearing the prettiest dress we never did get around to ironing and silently accepting whatever hairdo we graced upon their heads. They remain our first best friends and keepers of our early secrets. Here are a few of the outfits I have made for someone’s Best Friend.
~Susannah