3Creative Studios Challenge - A tale of procrastination

When I heard about the 3creative studios colour palette challenge earlier this year I knew I wanted to join in. I have a big pile of doll making books on the shelf and although I have attempted a couple of dolls in the past it's something that I've been wanting to play more with and just never got round to. Anyhow I thought that I might marry the two up and use the palette challenge to play around with dolls.

Well the inspiration picture and colours for this month were announced a while ago and I've been procrastinating. I took a quick glance at the picture and decided that the colours weren't speaking to me. I've been putting off starting anything until the beginning of this week when I decided that I didn't want to fail at the first hurdle. I told myself that even though the colours weren't speaking to me I'd join the challenge by making something small like a postcard.So I printed out the picture and palette and raided the scrap boxes. Wow, once I laid these colours out I just loved them together. I couldn't wait to get going and the idea of a postcard went right out of the window and the original plan for experimenting with doll forms came back again. I decided for my first doll attempt I'd have a go at a pretty simple, primitive kind of goddess form.
I figured it might be interesting to play around with the fabric weaving idea again. The picture above shows my woven 'base' fabric.I really like the earthy tones of all the fabrics together, and that along with the original picture which was of a pine bough really gave me the feeling of the colours that you might experience on a woodland walk.I decided that my doll would be a goddess of the pine forest. I started decorating the fabric with some of the leafy patterns that are among the decorative stitches on my sewing machine.I just randomly stitched all over the cloth in a few different pattern variations. It was an interesting experiment as I really liked some of the bits on the cloth but knew that there was no guarantee that these would be on the final doll as the fabric would get cut up again.I have to admit that it was a bit tricky turning the doll, particularly getting the layered woven fabric through the tiny neck, but I managed it in the end. Got a bit more recycling done too as I again stuffed out the doll form with some of the bits and pieces that would have otherwise ended up in the bin from other projects. You might recognise some mug rug trimmings going in here :)I was a bit undecided about what to do with the face. Originally I thought I'd use a rubber stamped face, but I liked how a bit of the vine stitching was going up the side of her face and didn't want to cover that so decided to go with paint. Sadly I'm no artist and faces will be one of the things that I hope to practise as the doll making experiments continue, but for now I think this one came out ok.I added some yarn that I had in the cupboard for her hair and she was done.I had so much fun making her, and am really pleased with how she came out but I can't help thinking that maybe she could have been even better if I hadn't left it all until the last minute. Moral of the story - Don't procrastinate just because you think you don't like something more often than not if you just get stuck in you'll realise that you love it!!And I even had enough of the woven base fabric left to cut a couple of backgrounds for postcards. They're on the sewing table waiting for a few extra embellishments and then will be tucked away again until needed.

Can't wait to see where the next palette will take me.