inspiration plus plus plus! a cloth doll adventure....

Okay, so I love making cloth dolls, even though they take me extraordinarily long periods of time to make (Nell took me several months of picking her up, putting her down, picking her up... etc). So, when the Melbourne Craft & Quilt Fair was in town, there was no way that I was going to miss the cloth doll classes! And, needless to say, they changed my life.

My first class was with Diana Chalk, who introduced me to a number of her favourite tools - the wooden skewer, the fruit juice straw and the forceps. She showed us amazing and sneaky ways to turn those fine parts of dolls that have in the past driven me bonkers. I will try to take a photo of me demonstrating the techniques and insert it here later....

Second class was completely fantastic, and this was with Bethan Short.

AMAZING woman... I am not exaggerating when I say that this class changed my life. She shared with us a number of her art dolls which were just divine, and all very simple patterns with beautiful embellishments. I am going to trial out the techniques I listed as favourites from this workshop and post them a bit at a time... it was an amazing learning experience for me, and I really hope to be able to share some of my new found skills in the next little while!

I tried to google Bethan but couldn't find much, and then remembered her telling us in the workshop that she is IT-phobic, so I should not have been surprised! I will try to find some real photos of her work (on paper) and then upload some pics here so you can see what I am making all this noise about... she is AMAZING.

About to head off for a wee break, so nothing from me now until mid-August (unless I get incredibly brave and decide to try mum and dad's dial up!).

Take care, and have a gorgeous beginning of August,
xx