If you've been following you'll know that I have been exploring cloth doll making in these challenges but with no sewing machine I decided to attempt something a bit smaller. So I went for the Quail pattern from ' The Artful Bird' Book by Abigail Patner.
You might also know that orange is my favourite colour so there was no way I was going to miss out making something from this colour palette.
Not a partridge in a pear tree but a quail in a Bay tree. :)
Here she is standing in the sun like the proper beach girl she is.
I ummed and ahhed about whether she should have hair, but I grew to like her without. She hasn't told me her whole story yet, but she's a maiden of the sea, she looks young but has been haunting the shores for more years that you or I have been alive.
She's not one for trinkets but she has a simple necklace made from stars she found on the beach, a shawl made from cast off fishing net, and a simple tie round her waist made from rope she found on her wanderings.
You might remember that last week I was busy making up some collage fabrics from my tiny scraps. Well they have all now been cut up and stitched back together to make a new doll. I'm call her Collette.
She's my entry for this last months 3CS challenge. Actually it's quite tricky to get a picture of her as a whole as she is really long and skinny. Again as with the other dolls I've made this year there is plenty of room for improvement but overall I'm really happy with how she turned out.
I found the construction a bit strange as you basically make a flat head, with only the tiniest amount of stuffing and then stitch that on to the neck of your main doll form. My face shape went a little squiffy and there a few tucks where there shouldn't be, but I'm not calling them mistakes they add character ;) After all we can't all be perfect.
I do like her long elegant shape though. I think I'll add some kind of hook to her back and have her hanging from the wall somewhere. I also love that she had separate little hands and feet attached to the long limbs with beads. These small pieces were quite tricky to turn but that was probably as much to do with the fact that I had seams in my fabrics from the collaging as it was the size of the pieces.
I gave her a great big shock of hair made from some yarn that I found in my yarn box. It's a mix from two different balls in the same range on in green and the other in pinks and purples, they were just perfect for the colour scheme.
I managed to get the lawns cut and some of the weeding done, there is still a long way to go but things out there are looking a lot better already. After some hard work I was lazing around on the lawn and Molly came to join me. I was trying to take her picture but she was more interested in rubbing up against the camera than posing for it!
Eventually she settled for rubbing herself in the grass rather than against the camera!
Also at the weekend we had the pleasure of looking after my friends two girls for a while. We managed to pack in lots of fun while we were with them including some sewing, as they both like making things. So I'd like to introduce you to the sock gang we made.
We had a fun trip in to town to find some cheap socks to buy, sods law dictated we all wanted socks from different packs so I think we came away with 9 pairs in the end, enough to make 18 sock bunnies!
This here is Sparkle, she was made by Elli who is the youngest of the girls, she's 9. She did all the stitching herself.
Elli also helped Dave with his sock creature too. He got bored after stitching up the ears so Elli did all the stuffing and the face on this one too. It's called Delli - Dave and Elli
This is Lucy Cooper. Amber made this one. She is a girl after my own heart, she picked out these cute skull and heart socks, which I love! And I also love the tongue hanging out of Lucy's mouth.
Finally this is numbskull. This one is mine. He's called numbskull as he has a great big green skull on the back of his head. 
I know you have seen some of these little guys before so I hope you're not going to be too bored seeing them again. Last time I think I had 11 made, now there are 21 and they are ready to march on Amsterdam at the end of the month.
Here they all are (sorry for the head tilting picture, I've tried a couple of times to upload this and no matter what I do it wants to stand on it's side!).
As you can see she has moved on and has a head and everything. I added some flowers to the bottom of her skirt and I'm a lot happier with the way it looks now.
These flowers match the one that I'd already added to her bodice. They come from a couple of bunches of artificial flowers that I picked apart.
I didn't finish her off exactly as the pattern in the book. I decided not to add netted ruffs to her sleeves, instead I just tied on some torn strips of left over sari silk.
I also didn't add ribbons to her legs as in the original pattern. I had to change out the fabric that I had first chosen for the legs as I didn't have quite enough. It got replace with a fabric that has a pretty dragonfly pattern so I thought the legs didn't really need anything extra.
I raided my yarn stash for her hair, and while I didn't have anything that stuck strickly to the colour pallette I'm happy with what I picked out.
Here is what I have for the skirts so far. I'm not happy yet there is a huge amount of embellishing to go before I can fix the things that I see wrong here. I need to get my needle out though as the deadline for the challenge is fast approaching.
Iris is starting to come to life. I'm sure you will have noticed that this girl has had some colour added to her face.
I'm really quite pleased with how she turned out. The faces have been really my biggest fear in the whole doll making process, but Jan's book gives some really clear instructions on how to construct and colour the face features.
She is by no means perfect and I had to improvise on some of the colours as I didn't have exact colour matches in my water colour pencils as given in the book but she's relatively realistic looking so I'm happy.
I'm not sure that it's picked up too well in the photo, but the fingers are made positionable by adding some chenille sticks (pipe cleaners to some of us!!) in to the hands. I wasn't able to find any white sticks and tried to take a short cut by adding some coloured ones that I managed to buy, but I'm really not happy. As the flesh fabric is so light the colour is showing through the fabric a lot.
Aren't the colours fabulous. I have decided to carry on my with doll making journey and will be using the challenge palettes over the next few months to work my way through this beautiful book. Starting with the simplest doll pattern in the book.
So I raided my fabrics and pulled out a whole variety of stuff that I think matches the palette, and of course something to make the fleshy parts of the doll with.
I will be making the body from these cotton fabrics that I pulled from my stash. 
I have also be raiding the non-cotton stash for possible pieces to make the dolls skirt from. The picture above shows what I came up with but I haven't really narrowed things down yet to what will actually get used, figured I'd try and get the doll form made first and play with ideas for decoration after.
So I have made a start on putting my doll together, who will of course be called Iris. Even the basic doll is proving to be a challenge for me as the face is drawn and painted on, and as I mentioned in my last doll post drawing is not something I'm good at.
So far I've attempted to sketch some features on to the face. It's looking as though Iris won't be having the most delicate features in the world, but I guess it may all change and look totally different once I've added the colour in. Watch this space I guess .......
They have all been stuffed and the zombie pumpkin army is on the march.
I have made 11 so far with plans for another 10 or so depending on what time I get. I love them. They are pretty freakish though, they were sat on the table the other night and they looked very menacing in the flickering candle light.
These heads are waiting to be stitched and stuffed and joined to the poor headless bodies that I have floating around the place. I'm hoping to get these done in the next couple of evenings so that I can work on some new stuff at the weekend.
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.
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.