Thursday, September 24, 2015

For Swaps: Patch and an Art Doll

Damn, I meant to post this sooner but all the sudden I have to WORK at my job (what?!) so I have next to no goof off time.  I decided to just make posting this one of my "to do" items so I'd get it done.

OK, here we go.

First up, a patch (for the monthly swap I do all the time)


Super simple.  My partner likes skeletons and all that, so I just trotted out some of my favorite fabric and added a tiny bit of embellishment.  The fabric is so cool I wanted to just let it speak for itself.

The back:


That was just a scrap from my scrap bin but it really works with the front fabric.  I swear, sometimes I spend more time figuring out the backing fabric than making the front!

Next up is the art doll I made for the HallowMuertes Art Doll swap.  For that swap you could make it halloween or dios de los muertos themed.


Hello Mr. Skeleton man!


He's mostly a Dios de los Muertos skeleton guy but he's not a mariachi or anything special like that.  Just a guy in a suit.  Kind of Jack Skellington but not.

I used a pattern someone sent me in a swap from years ago.  I've used this pattern before to make an art doll but I never painted a doll.  This guy is totally painted.

I made the body in scraps of cotton and muslin (which is technically cotton) and then gave them all a base coat with white paint mixed with fabric medium.  Then I put on the top coat of black (with no medium) then added the embellishments using paint pens.


Smile for the camera!

He has a cute face that's very simple in design.  I didn't want to mess it up so I kept it simple.


The black paint pen is just shiny enough that it stands out against the more matte acrylic black paint.  So I could use it to make the shaping of the coat.  I debated giving him lapels but there wasn't really enough room on the body to make them turn out well, so I decided against it.


His limbs are button joints and do move.  They also scrape against the body a bit so over time there should be some nice wear as the limbs rub the paint along the body.  I didn't seal the whole doll for two reasons.  One, I wasn't sure exactly the best product to use and I didn't want to mess up the doll after I had him all finished (sewing the limbs on was literally painful--my fingers were sore jabbing the needle through the painted fabric).  Second reason not to seal was I wanted the doll to show wear as it happened.  I could have distressed it before hand but I'm lazy and (well, that's mostly the reason) I like the idea of the doll showing natural wear, just like an olden days doll!

I LOVED making this dolls (except attaching the limbs, I put that step off for ever because I knew it would be boring and annoying--it wasn't as bad as I thought but it was boring as hell).

I love how he turned out and after working with this pattern again I think I could edit this pattern a bit to make different body shapes (I'd start by trimming those feet down a bit--this pattern was for an "acrobat" doll so I get why the feet are super huge and it's not bad for this dolls but smaller would be better).

Both of these are off to their new homes Friday.

What else am I up to?  I need to get my latest round of Disney patches done (they are going to turn out very nice) and get my Fluff sewing done (have a bunch of stuff started, very little finished. . .story of my life) and then some other swaps.

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