Category Archives: Dolls

Treasures (1920’s doll house miniatures)

Posted on by
12

These doll house miniatures belonged to my mother, who was born in 1925 in Providence, RI.  In the photograph, she looks like the classic little girl from her era. My sister, brother and I played with the toys, too. The porcelain dolls have been well-loved and are showing wear, but the metal toys held up much better. The mail box is also a bank. I just noticed that the mower (or carpet sweeper?) is named SallyAnn, names my mother would give to my sister and me, only spelled with e’s.

my mother, Mary Hartwell (Mavor) 1928

Treasures (red hat couple)

Posted on by
3

This eccentric pair belonged to my grandmother. The butterfly catcher and the lady with the mushroom hat are about 4″ tall, with hollow crocheted skirts to make them stand. I have no idea where they were made, but they look German or Scandinavian. His glasses and butterfly net and her wood-handled umbrella are remarkable details. I love their sculped fabric faces, even ears on the man!

Close-ups (Mary’s lamb)

Posted on by
11

It’s lambing season, so the closeups are all from my 1995 children’s book, Mary Had a Little Lamb.

MHALLcoverWMThe 32-page hardcover first edition is out of print, but Mary Had a Little Lamb has been re-released as a board book. (sorry, it too is out of print) Read further to learn how some of the illustrations were made.

MHALL23WM

The barn wall is made from an old weathered shingle and the straw bed is a mixture of real straw and embroidery floss.

MHALL45WM

The lamb is made of wool felt, then covered in wool french knots. Mary’s dress is made of a cotton sock and the furniture hinge is a hook and eye.

MHALLp67WM

The lamb’s ears are made from kid leather and the garden wall is beach stones glued in a circle

MHALLclimbtreeWM

The tree trunk is wool tweed and Mary’s toes are made of wire, wrapped in embroidery floss.  

MHALL1011WM

The leaves are cut out of artificial leaves and the wood pile next to the house is made of wooden beads.

MHALLschoolWM

 This scene inside the schoolhouse has desks sawed out of wood and a real slate black board.

Note: See other posts in the Close-ups series archive here.

Treasures (Foreign Paper Dolls)

Posted on by
5

We had this set of Foreign Paper Dolls when we were children. It was one of the things I was rummaging for when I fell and broke my wrist, 6 weeks ago. The cast just came off and I’m starting physical therapy to get my frozen wrist moving again. This feels like great progress toward being able to sew again! The box of paper dolls says, “Copyright MCMLVII (1957) by The Platt & Co., Inc.”. I can remember cutting out the clothes and playing with them. The dolls include Toshiko (Japan), Ingrid (Sweden), Yongtu (Korea), Yvonne (France), Juan (Mexico), Hans (Germany), Juliane (Holland), Liat (Tahiti). They certainly had a lot of outfits to choose from! 

 

Here is picture of us about the time we would have cut out their paper clothes. We were driving our white station wagon with the wooden roof box across the country.

my mother, Anne, Salley and Jimmy 1960

Toshiko, Juliane, Yvonne, Yongtu, Juan, Ingrid. Liat, Hans

paper doll clothes

Hans (Germany), Toshiko (Japan), Juan (Mexico), Liat (Tahiti), Yvonne (France)

Hans (Germany), Toshiko (Japan), Juan (Mexico)

Yongtu (Korea), Yvonne (France), Juliane (Holland), Liat (Tahiti), Ingrid (Sweden)

Hans (Germany), Toshiko (Japan). Juan (Mexico)

Close-ups (snow)

Posted on by
4

In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan,   

Earth stood hard as iron,   

Water like a stone;   

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,   

Snow on snow,   

In the bleak midwinter,   

Long ago.   

by Christina Rossetti, English poet (1830 – 1894)   

drawing by Salley. age 6

 With snow falling and lingering in many parts of the country this winter, I’ve found some  snow pictures to show you. First, here’s a crayon drawing saved from my childhood by my mother. Then we skip ahead to 1995, with a detail from the title page of the 32-page edition of Mary Had a Little Lamb. It’s the scene where Mary, her brother and her father are trudging through the snow to visit the lamb in the barn.  

detail from "Mary Had a Little Lamb" 1995

 The next scene is from the illustration for the poem “Snow”, which is in the poetry anthology, You and Me: Poems of Friendship. The snowman is made of felt, painted with an acrylic based bumpy liquid medium. In the background is an old linen tablecloth.  

detail from "You and Me: Poems of Friendship" 1997

 Here are some wee folk dolls that were brought out to play in the snow. 

Wee Folk in the Snow 2002

 This snowflake covered bed spread is part of an illustration from Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes. The bed frame is made from some hollow dried plant parts, maybe thorns, with the sharp points cut off. I bought them a long time ago in a bead store. The original illustrations will be shown in a traveling exhibit when the book is released next September. Find out about it here.  

detail from "Pocketful of Posies" 2010

Note: See other posts in the Close-ups series archive here.

And the winners are…

Posted on by
5

I had the pleasure of judging the Felt Smack Down 2010 “Challenge Alert”, which was organized by Patty from My life under the bus.  You can see all the projects entered in the contest on her blog here. The premise of the challenge was to make something based on my Felt Wee Folk book. Here are the results! It was very rewarding to see such a variety of entries to the contest. Everyone’s felt project showed imagination and oozed enthusiasm, so it was fun to look at all the submissions, knowing that there was a lot of thought and labor invested in each one. 

I looked for what I thought was the best character development, color choices, workmanship and presentation. I also was interested in how the projects from my book could inspire someone to come up with their own ideas and interpretations. 

Prizes are for the following projects: 

1st prize- Alison of Acorn Cottage for her Little Bo Peep. See her blog here. 

First Prize, Little Bo Peep made by Alison

Little Bo Peep with sheep made by Alison

2nd prize- Caroline for her handsome fellow 

Second Prize, Handsome Fellow made by Caroline

3rd prize- Loralynn’s Cottage  

Third Prize, Loralynn's Cottage

Thank you to Patty for organizing this contest and to all the folks who committed themselves and worked on projects over the last few weeks. That’s a lot of blanket stitches!

My Studio 1977

Posted on by
9

Recently, I found a set of four pen and marker drawings in an old portfolio. Seeing my old apartment in Providence brought the 1976-77 RISD school year back into focus. I remember that we were given an assignment in class to go home and draw all four walls of our rooms.

east wall of my studio in 1977

During my years at RISD, the illustration dept. did not have studio spaces for students, so we turned our bedrooms into our studios. This is the first year I lived outside of a dorm, in an apartment with decent sized rooms. Over the year, I filled up my room with materials and work areas. This was a transitional period in my art, where I was moving away from drawing and painting to 3-dimentional pieces. I was making a lot of dolls, including these Can Can dancers that I can see in the drawing, on the floor. I taught myself how to make dolls with wire armatures, so that they could be posed for photographs. I must have seen some dolls made with stuffed nylon stockings and tried making some myself. At the time, there were no instruction books or classes on this kind of soft sculpture. The school’s textile dept. was more oriented toward weaving and fabric design, which I was not interested in. I wanted to tell a story through my artwork, so I continued taking illustration classes, teaching myself something new with each assignment.

I experimented on my own with materials and techniques, always adapting and changing my approach.  Looking back, I can see that working on illustration assignments with a clear deadline, forced me to concentrate on the narrative part of my artwork and kept me from becoming too focused on the process of creating.  My goal was  to effectively communicate an idea, not just show how well I could sew something.  Ironically, the 3-dimentional work was much more time consuming, but it didn’t seem to matter, since I was inspired and having much more fun! I no longer have the Can Can Dancers, but found this photograph.

Can Can Dancers, 1977

I brought my trusty Singer Feather-weight sewing machine to school and set up a sewing table.  I used this machine for years until I got a Bernina that could do fancy stitches. Today, I rarely get out a machine, but do all stitching by hand.

south wall of my studio in 1977

The table was an old thing of my grandmother’s that I painted orange. It’s still very much in use in my studio today. I got my old sewing machine out of storage to take its picture.  It runs forward and back and is  good for stitching small things.

Singer Feather-weight

A few years earlier, while in high school, I sewed the quilt pictured on the bed on the Singer Feather-weight. It was the first of just a few usable quilts that I’ve  made.

west wall of my studio in 1977

I plan on redoing this quilt, taking out the thread ties, putting on a new back and hand quilting the whole thing. The fabrics were all pieces we had in the house, mostly from clothes that my mother, sister and I made.

my first quilt, about 1972

I can identify many things in this drawing, the stereo speakers, my red hat, flood lights, rolls of paper, and the rug hanging on the wall. My mother gave me this beautifully woven wool rug and it seemed too nice to put on the floor.

north wall of my studio in 1977

 I still have the rug, which I now keep on the floor in my studio.

Scandinavian wool rug

Rumage in high places, a long fall down

Posted on by
23

I found what I was looking for, some fabric and some old paper dolls from my childhood. I don’t remember what happened, but…  

from “Jack and Jill”, “Pocketful of Posies” 2010

I must have fallen while getting back on the ladder to go down from my loft storage area.  

Paper Dolls from 1950's

So, after an ambulance trip to our local hospital emergency room, where I remember seeing two nurses who worked on the Woods Hole Quilt, I went by ambulance to another hospital in Boston. Well, I’ve broken my left arm, which is better than my right arm, which is the one I use more. For now, I am back home with a cast, waiting to meet a hand specialist in Boston.  

  

So, I’ll be running at low-speed for a while. I know that most of you who follow my blog will say “take a break and don’t worry about it “, but luckily I have some posts all lined up, so they’ll be  coming on a regular basis for a month or so. I’ve got a 3 part story about my pins that I used to make about 30 years ago and some more posts from my Close-ups series as well as some surprises.  And, of course, I’ll be writing a story about the paper dolls. When posted, you’ll know that I’m more on the mend!