My parents have spent the last year slowly renovating and packing up the house I grew up in, preparatory to selling it and moving back to Kentucky, where they lived when they were young and where my entire family still does live. This has involved a lot of headaches, as I'm sure you can imagine. But it's also turned up some buried treasures.

Recently, my mother unpacked a chest containing handmade items made by my great grandmother, grandmother, great-aunts, and other women in my family who died before I was born. These included aprons, doll blankets, baby blankets, pillow cases, and doll clothes, some of which were made for me and for my mother when we were children.

This apron was put together from handkerchiefs by my great-grandmother. There are several others like it, but this was the prettiest. I used to play dress-up with them when I was a kid--aprons were novelty items in my house--but only when I saw them recently did it strike me how flimsy they were. I mean, it's not like my great-grandmother was fixing people salads and mixing mimosas. She was frying everything in a twenty gallon vat of grease and topping it with gravy.

My mother explained that because my great-grandfather was the head of their little church, pretty much everybody came to eat at their house on a Sunday afternoon. (This, incidentally, is why when my mother and I cook, we cook enough for twenty people at a time--we both learned to cook from people who actually had twenty people at a time to feed.) The women of the church would file into the kitchen with my great-grandmother and insist on being put to work (in the way that guests inevitably do just when there's nothing more to be done.) My great-grandmother would obligingly offer them a selection of her beautiful handmade aprons to wear and allow them to help her carry a pitcher of tea out to the table.

My grandmother told me that I had a lot of my great-grandmother in me this Christmas. I took it as a compliment, and I was obliged to see her point.

I have a ton of posts to make, and I hope to get caught up before the end of the month. In the mean time, I thought I'd share this picture that I took while I was in Kentucky visiting family over Christmas:




I've been meaning to ask around and find out if anyone knows when this started up. I saw several other barns with quilt blocks on them while I was in the area, but the first couple of times I thought it was just random. Apparently, though, it's a statewide effort.

Pretty nifty, huh?

Oh, and speaking of Christmas, here's a picture of the miniature quilt that I made to go in my aunt's red and blue room:

THE ARMY OF CUTE CAN HAS ITS OWN ETSY SHOP

I have at least two long posts I keep meaning to make here, including a photographic retrospective of handmade items from my grandmother and great-grandmother's linen closets, as well as a close encounter between a member of the Army of Cute and a rock star, but before any more shopping days pass us by I wanted to link you guys to the new shop, which contains a few never-before-seen items. Give it a look and let me know what you think!

My summer quilt, which I'd almost given up on, is back on the table, now that I've found just enough white fabric to finish piecing together the bottom half.



Spike, my roommate's cat, is seen here, modeling it for us.



And a bonus shot of the shelf against the wall to the right of my desk. lizbee asks if their staring creeps me out. "There's a great deal of religious statuary tucked in behind them," I assure her.

So, like, a year and a half ago or something ridiculous like that, jonquil made a post about her homemade jams.

"I like jams," I thought. "I will see if I can trick her into giving me some."

So I asked her if I could make her a doll in exchange for some jam, and she replied that she would like a mermaid. But not any mermaid--a very particular mermaid.

"She should be fierce, and have bare breasts, and look as though she's never touched the water's surface."

What a fantastic idea, I thought. And promptly lost track of it for 18 months.

But now she's done, with her hair and gills and seaweed and shells and pearls-that-were-her-eyes, and also a baby which was a bit of a surprise.



Not even my fabulous new camera can hide my ineptitude as a photographer.



The details on their tails. Though they aren't pictured, both mermaids have dorsal fins in the back. The green stuff is seaweed, which, let me tell you, Internets, is hard to cut free-handed out of a narrow strip of felt.

The way I started with embroidery is sort of the story of how I got start making stuff in general. As a seven year old kid figuring stuff out on my own, I found clothes and dolls pretty much impossible, so I started drawing on fabric with thread--it was more accessible and the results were immediate. My grandmother still has one of my early projects. It hangs on the wall in her sewing room, still in the embroidery hoop (which I thought of as basically a picture frame.) I stitched her last name in machine thread and tried my best to satin stitch the individual lines (though naturally I had no idea that it was called satin stitching, or that it had a name, or that anyone had ever done it before.) I hated to be shown how to do things, so I was perpetually reinventing wheels--not that there were really any teachers in my life at that time, since my mother hated sewing and my grandmother lived far away.

Anyway, awhile back I got a piece of blue velvet out of a remnant bin that simply screamed "canvas" to me. I still itch to make pictures whenever I look at a piece of rich, plain cloth. And since I still have great bare spaces on my walls, I decided to make something I would like for my own room, instead of anything I would bother trying to sell. The result was a combination of satin stitching, fabric applique, beading, and gluing to produce my Tree of Life wallhanging



Trees have had a special significance for me ever since I was a teenager and start scrounging around for symbols I could use for self identification. (Yes, I was That Girl in high school.) But the way this particular Tree got started mostly had to do with the fact that I rummaged through my stores and found a gorgeous, variegated gold-brown cotton print that contrasted with the midnight blue like they'd been made to go together.

Pictured above is the bare trunk. I cut a single strip of fabric, the divided the upper portion into four strips, and arranged them in a branch-like formation. One thinks, naturally, of the Tree of Life, or World Tree, or any of its various incarnations, as being a stern and mighty tree that dwarfs our petty concerns, but since it was my Tree and my life, I thought it should be a young looking tree, almost Dryad-ish.

I pinned and basted the cotton onto the velvet then satin stitched all the edges. Did that take a long time, you ask? About as long as it took to hand-quilt the full sized quilt I made my friend around this time last year. But it was the look I wanted, so it was worth it.



I was envisioning the tree as a kind of willow, though not precisely like any tree found in nature. There are green fronds sort of undulating from the branches, large red blossoms, green leaves, red beads, gold beads, and a couple of birds. Everything's embroidered with silk floss, except for the beads, obviously, and the leaves, which are simply cotton fabric that I cut out into the right shape and and immersed in fabric glue, making them stiff and sticky and sealing up the edges so they don't fray.



For a long time after I finished all the embroidery, it hung exactly as you see it here, weighted down by candlesticks on top of my bookshelves and hanging over my books. I'd done the important part, you see, and now the picture was finished, I had to sort of force myself to put on a backing and a binding.



But eventually, I got it done. I treated it pretty much exactly like a quilt top, only I didn't sandwich any batting between the layers. The backing is just a leftover piece of blue and white cotton that looks like pebbles underwater, and the binding is a stiff cotton the same color as the velvet.

The last wall hanging I made was basically a small quilt--not quite large enough for a lap quilt, not quite small enough for a doll quilt. It was a birthday present for my mother, and at her request I made a thingy up top and slid a dowel rod through it so it would hang straight and even.



As you can see, trees are something of a theme for both of us, although my mother specifically adores willows:



This tree, I embroidered free hand, outlining the shape and then filling it in with staggered stitches.


It was nice making something just for myself for once. Normally I don't see much point, but I think the Tree might be something I keep up with over the years--maybe one year in the distant future I'll take off the binding and add some detail and stitch it all back up again.

I haven't been able to quilt the way I wanted to this summer. I put together half of a quilt top for a particularly colorful light summer blanket back in June but I ended up altering the pattern in such a way that twice as much of a certain kind of fabric was called for (a fabric, mind, that I never thought in a MILLION years anyone would run out of) and the next time I went back for more...it was gone. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that one--wait until I run into something that matches tolerably well, maybe, or divvy it up into baby quilts. We'll see.

In the mean time, I am planning a new one that I'm calling my winter garden quilt. The foundational fabrics are pictured below:



The two fabrics at the bottom were the real inspiration for this one. I love red and green together in ways that don't call Christmas to mind in too obvious a way, but still evoke winter feelings and winter palettes. I do realize, by the way, that it isn't even fall yet, but I'm already homesick for cooler weather, and it will be nice to have the quilt ready in time to enjoy it when the cold actually arrives.

Last month I created a brand new pattern for dolls with jointed legs, moveable limbs, and embroidered faces. Arachne and Persephone are the prototypes. They're sixteen inches tall (although Arachne's hair is so big it makes her a smidge taller.)

(Many more pictures available at my Flickr.)

I'm a big Persephone fan, so when I decided to do a mythology/folklore doll line she was the first person I thought of. In case anyone needs a little reminding, here's Persephone's story.

She was the daughter of Demeter, and called Kore which simply means Maiden. As such, she was the Goddess of Spring. One day, as she was out picking flowers, Hades, the God of the Underworld, abducted her, raped her, and made her Queen of the Underworld. In that role she has often been described as a cold and unhappy goddess. Demeter fought hard to get her daughter back and eventually rescued her from the Underworld, but Persephone must always return to the underworld every year.

Arachne came around because I thought that costuming her would be a fun challenge.

She was a fantastic weaver and young and stupid so she went around saying she was the best at it. And Athena heard and was furious and challenged her to a throw-down. Arachne was all like, "Bring it!" and so the thing began.

Coming soon, we have a mermaid and a faerie, and probably Athena. Other ideas for mythological/folklore dolls, bring 'em on!

As of today my commission status is open again. Eventually I'm going to set up an Etsy shop, and in the mean time anyone interested in purchasing either doll can leave a comment here or email me at hey DOT branwyn AT gmail DOT com.

(The text of the myths comes from Women in Greek Myths, a fabulous websie that frequently sucks down hours of my reading time.)

My work week lengthens--nearly doubles, in fact--every summer. (Well, at least it did last June, and it's done so this June. How many times does it have to happen before I can say "every summer?") I teach independent living skills to three autistic individuals, all of whom live in different towns and have different schedules, and as two of them are in school, everything gets turned around for me in the summer.

Anyway, the upshot is that it's quite rare for me to have two entire days off in a week, and I never needed them more than this weekend, so I'm very glad I got them. Yesterday was spent entirely lounging in bed reading Emma (which, from some oversight, I hadn't read since 8th grade, though I reread the others all annually.) I ordered take-out for lunch and dinner, and watched the Kate Beckinsdale adaptation of the novel while chatting with lizbee of Squid Stitch, before going to bed at nearly 5 in the morning. Today I woke up at 11 to a chorus of hungry animals (my roommate's three cats and a dog) and started re-reading Jane Eyre (I've been in a mood, what can I say). Now I'm a) watching the latest BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, featuring OMG JANET MCTEER, one of my favorite actresses, as Mrs Dashwood, and eating a cup of strawberries and grapes from Whole Foods. Apparently, when you leave grapes in a cup with strawberries for a few days, they became 5 thousand times more delicious. Who knew? But then, I also didn't know that Pink Lady apples, diced into fresh squeezed lemon juice, were among the tastiest foods known to man. Thanks, Whole Foods.

The rest of today will be spent working on my quilt. Now, here's where I wish I had a camera, so I could show you the work in progress. I don't know if there's a name for the design I'm using--I'm not working from a pattern exactly--but the inspiration was this lovely item from Cluck Cluck Sew. Only mine is a rainbow set in white---pink, orange, yellow, blue, green, and purple 5x5 squares across the top, framed in white, deepening in hue from top to bottom. My hope is to make a light summer quilt, appropriate for fending off the chill of an air conditioner.

Lately I've felt as though I were bursting with inspiration to no purpose--full of ideas, but neither time nor energy to put them into action. This is owing partly to work, but also to a relentless perfectionism that probably borders on OCD--I can't begin a project until things are just so, my work space is tidied and ordered, the dishes are washed, the right music is playing. It's frustrating because it leads me to waste a lot of time I could use for creating things because I don't have the energy to do that AND all the leading-up things. I'm trying to be more reasonable with myself.



Not my grapes and strawberries, but pleasant to look at nonetheless.

Anyone still out there? :-)

A lot of things have happened over the past year--the most important of which was that I got a job last May, which put a (temporary) end to my dollmaking. I started up quilting shortly beforehand, and to no one's surprise, kept on with it to the point that my fabric stash is now overrun with fat quarters. Then in January I was finally able to move into an apartment of my own, and the last five months have devoted to balancing all the new elements in my life. I kept on making things, of course, and I knew that eventually I would get back to blogging about it, especially because the last few months have served to introduce to my the wide and lovely world of crafty bloggers whose blogs are like elegantly appointed parlors. Highly inspirational, all around.

So now I'm back, and very pleased about it. Those of you who have sent commissions my way over the course of the last year while I was MIA, thanks very much for remembering me. One small hurdle in this new stage of my career is that, as I no longer see my mother on a daily basis, I can't appropriate her digital camera whenever I like, so photographs will be rather slower to come. I'm working on this, however, and in the mean time, take a look at Champagne and Trumpets, my Flickr, which contains pictures of most of the quilt and doll work I've done recently.

Belladonna Dolls is now Belladonna Designs, a reflection of how my crafty pursuits have opened up over the last 13 months. doll_shop, however, will remain doll_shop. Only now, there's a little cafe at the front end where you can have tea and browse books, and chat with a friend while the Army of Cute keeps you company. :-)

Following up on Margaret of Anjoy and Ophelia, here's the next member of the Shakespeare Collection: Portia, from The Merchant of Venice, dressed as a lawyer to do battle in court with Shylock.





For sale in the usual manner. :)

Those of you who follow my doings as cesario will know that I have embarked on a Shakespeare intensive project of late, beginning with a reading of Hamlet. I decided that unity in my pursuits would not be a bad things, so I'm trying my hand at some Shakespeare dolls.

First off, we have Margaret of Anjou, from the Henry VI plays.



( Those of you who saw this in my journal, they're all the same pictures. )


Next, a slightly simpler project in the form of a 8 inch felt leggy doll: Ophelia.



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Now, this four inch felt doll of Dumbledore was meant to be the beginning of this past year's Christmas angel lineup. But Christmas turned out a little crazier than anticipated, and I never got around to making more. So here he is in all his solitary glory.



( view of wings from back. )

And last, something I've been meaning to expand for awhile now, though other projects keep getting in the way---I started learning how to do bookbinding right before Christmas, and I've made a number of journals both as gifts and for private use. So eventually I thought, wouldn't it be fun to unite dollmaking and bookbinding and make myself a dollmaking journal? This was the result.



The doll on the front is an original character of mine from a novel I might get back to working on some day. It's all done in felt, over cardboard. I thought, if there was any interest, maybe I would try my hand at a few more designs in the same vein for the Army of Cute---anyone think they might be interested in buying a journal of this kind, if it were sufficiently attractive, of course? I could probably do them in a fannish vein as well.

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Well, there you have the latest offerings from Belladonna Studios. Ophelia and angel Dumbledore are for sale for the standard prices by type; see the FAQ for details.

Well, things have been slow here at AoC HQ, but now we're back with a full detachment.

First off, we have a large Phantom of the Opera ragdoll commissioned by theriversdream before Christmas, and which I'm afraid it took me rather a long time to finish, what with the interruption of the holidays.



He's 25 inches tall, clothed entirely in satin, except for his boots and mask, which are felt.

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Next off, we have a...rather unusual large sculpted doll. Actually, she began life as Lily Evans in a wedding dress, but no one bought her and really, that's just as well, because the more I looked at her the less satisfied I was with the job I'd done on her---I was still learning my way around the large sculpted doll pattern I'd come up with when I made her, and she looked a little irregular. So I started fiddling around with her, until one thing led to another and I realized that, deep in her dolly soul, she really wasn't a Lily at all.



She was The Ghost of Anne Boleyn.

I know that Anne Boleyn didn't have red hair, but it connects her to her daughter iconographically, and really, the head under the arm thing is the point. I've wanted to make a headless doll for ages, it just took me some time to work out the logistics of a free-standing head.

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I get the feeling that when my mother sees that one she's going to give me a very odd look, but the 16th century is my field, after all, and I read a book about the ghosts of the Tower of London at an impressionable age.

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This last isn't a doll at all, nor is it for sale, but since I'm using this journal as a general record of my craft exploits, I thought sharing pictures might be appropriate. I've been trying to learn my way around crazy quilting, and quilting in general, for awhile now. In this spirit, and for my mother's recent birthday, I embarked on two projects---a small quilt, in a more or less traditional method (pictures at my personal journal), and a journal cover that I made as an experiment in the crazy quilting process. I clearly have a great deal to learn, but for a first effort I don't think the embroidery shames me utterly.



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And last but not least, I'll take this opportunity to mention items that have been languishing in the inventory for a long freakin' time now, and which are, consequently, on sale.

Harry Potter and Severus Snape bunka dolls, down from $45 to $25 apiece.

Elizabeth Bennett, down from $95 to $75.

Young Albus Dumbledore in Muggle Suit, down from $25 to $15.

Destiny, Dream, and Despair of the Endless, down to $10 apiece.

See the FAQ for questions about ordering.

The person who commissioned this doll wanted me to make her little sister as a Hogwarts student in Slytherin robes.

( Five more. )



This one was...I don't even know. I was curious about experimenting with felt in forms unlike the usual felt dolls I make, so I started with the outline of a dress, then stuffed it, then made arms and a head and...stuff. There's a sack of rice at the bottom, so she's free-standing. Sometimes I use her as a pin-cushion---she's very effective, that way. She isn't really anyone in particular, but the reddish color of her hair and her 90's Victorian dress made me think of her as Violet Hunter from "The Copper Beeches".

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lizbee, who is in a very real way responsible for the existence of this journal and my apprenticing myself to dollmaking in the first place, recently commissioned a Romana I doll to match the Romana II I made for her just about exactly a year ago. I believe she has some special plans for this incarnation of Romana. Best not to inquire too closely.

( eight more pictures below the cut. )

Been a while since I did one this size. This is a small sculpted felt doll commissioned by crankykitten to resemble the protagonist of her novel.



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I recently received a commission for two teacup dolls in the shape of a bride and groom, to top a wedding cake.

Trying to take photos of them was murder, because they didn't want to stand up together for love or money, but eventually I found a suitably sized dollstand. Here they are, posing in front of a tea cozy I just made.




A close up on the bride's face.




And the groom's face...




And the bouquet...

Those of you who have been following the progress of Xander the Doll at kerouacxander as he makes his way around the United States will have seen this already, but for the rest of you, I just had to point it out:

That right there is one of MY DOLLS in Julet Landau's slim white hands.

As a fannish dollmaker, I personally feel that my life has been made complete.

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In other news, I thought I'd point out that the FAQ's have been updated to reflect all the new doll types I've started making over the last year, along with a price guide.

As any of you who have seen the business cards know, my original four-inch felt doll of Delirium is the emblem of Belladonna Dolls, and I keep going back to her because...well, face it, she's just so freakin' adorable.
Then last night, I was struck by a whim---there really ought to be a huggably sized Delirium in the world, oughtn't there?

So I fiddled about a little bit, and I made one.



She's ten inches tall. Under the cut you'll see a picture of her beside a normal-sized felt doll for comparison

( Big Delirium )


Occasionally, for a break, I like to make simple doll forms that mostly exist to show off some of the colorful collection of cotton prints and crazy yarns I've accumulated. To that end, here's a new Wish Doll.



This wish doll is $20 USD.

This was one of the more interesting commissions I've received---three of the members of the group My Chemical Romance, who I confess I'd barely heard of prior to researching them for the dolls. The person who commissioned them requested I use the same doll form as I did for the Problem Student doll, only altered so that they had legs. The result is something like a miniature ragdoll, only made all from one piece of fabric.



The chief way I distinguished between them was by hairstyle. They all wear black, mostly, and they all have dark hair, so mimicking the hairstyles was crucial to their personalities. It was quite a challenge, but all the more fun for that. You haven't lived as a dollmaker until you've attempted to shape a pompadour out of black twine.

The person who commissioned them asked that I take pictures of the dolls while I was working on them. It's been a long time since I did a how-to post, so I thought the time was ripe for another.

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