March Madness - Little of This and That

What's today?  Oh, the ninth.  Right.  As I was assembling these photos for you and composing a posting in my mind, I realized just how higgledy-piggledy this all seems.  Well, it's been that way for me for the last - almost month.  Five more days and it will be a month since I last posted.  I've not been in touch with some of my closest friends for weeks.  I seem to be slogging my way through the days and trying to maintain an upbeat attitude. I get on this website to write a posting and see that someone has left.  Am I that boring?  Maybe what I need is a designer to revamp this blog.  Make it brighter.  I'm hesitant to explore doing this myself because I've wiped out world grids messing with this computer before.  For the time being, I must let the images be the magic.

The remainder of February was a jumble of tossing ideas around and continuing to study Elizabeth Andrus's work from her Creative Breathing blog.  It became a bit of an   

obsession, and I continued to try to find out what happened to her.  Why did she stop posting?  I finally, reluctantly, tried the obituaries where I found an Elizabeth Andrus (1955-2021).  Looking closely at the only photo she gave us of herself, it is quite possible she was born in '55.  Was this her?  Saddened, I took a deep breath, thanked her for leaving us this legacy, and picked up some wool felt and my embroidery needle. I adore her nursery toys and her "parade floats" made from 50's kitsch ceramic planters.  They make me smile.  

She also left us some patterns without instructions, and not all the patterns actually match the toys she shared with us.  But it's a start and I wanted to start somewhere and give this a go.  I've been designing doll clothing for eleven years and needle felting for five?, six? years. Time to expand and grow.  I haven't any children therefore no grandchildren, but I wanted to make the ducky on wheels, so decided to make this for a young friend's  new baby.

When you print out a pattern without instructions or a given size of the object, it's a good guess as to how big the item would be, but I always like smaller.  I'm pretty sure given the photo of Elizabeth's duck, that I got it just about right at 5 1/4".  

The basics are wool felt from The Felt Pod, craft buttons and lots of embroidery thread.  Talk about a lot of work!  Each part of the toy is hand-sewn together with a blanket or button-stitch.  Details such as the eyes and cheeks, and the division of feathers in the wings are embroidered.  I think I spent two days trying to figure out just how to assemble it all, but in retrospect, I think its up to the individual how they approach this.  I like wire armature, so pipe cleaners works for me, and one was inserted through the bottom of the head then into the  

body.  The wings and wheels were simply sewn on.

One of the most ridiculous and agonizing parts of creating this ducky, was trying to figure out how to get the beak attached.  Studying Elizabeth's photo as carefully as I could, I gleaned that it was stuck through a slit in the gusset of the face.  How to make it look like a beak?  I'd have to show you how I did that, but basically it was done by pinching the ends and sewing them together.  One beak piece on top of the other, curling the lower one up into the top one, pinching it together and making a stitch, then inserting the beak into the slit.  It took me no less than two days to figure this out.  

While I love the little sailor hat she made for her ducky, I wanted to make this my own.  Since the plush toy was for a little girl's room, I decided to make it a bonnet with flowers sewn onto the side.

February went by in a whoosh and the March winds began to blow.  I love March.  It's that tween month signaling the end of winter and the beginning of spring.  

I grew up in a Catholic household and March was a pretty big deal.  It was the beginning of Lent and that meant giving up something you loved for like three weeks.  I was a dedicated little Catholic and took it all very seriously and gave up television one Lenten season.  I knew how to suffer even then.  

But one of the joys was in Mardi Gras which kicked off the Lenten season.  My mother's family was from New Orleans, so Mardi Gras was a pretty big deal.  We had a seamstress in the family, my mother's sister's husband's mother, who sewed the Mardi Gras costumes, and I got to meet her and see the costumes when I was ten years old.  Today that legacy has been passed down to her granddaughter, my 

cousin, Paula Gorbach, whose last name has probably changed to due to marriage.  But, oh how I remember visiting Granny Gorbach in her tiny home and seeing all those glorious costumes!

Since we lived in California, I waited with bated breath for the box to arrive after Mardi Gras.  My grandmother would send us a big box full of doubloons and strands of beads and other assorted items tossed from the floats.  I'd have my own little Mardi Gras parade once the box arrived and was sorted through, and still today, enjoy the very idea.  And that was in the early 60s when the stuff was GOOD.  What became of it all?

So, this year I dressed my American Girl, Cecile, in her Mardi Gras fairy costume.  Bernie wore her costume by Kathy Filanowski.  Sylvie got dressed in Ruby Red Galleria, and Violaine Perrin wore Integrity's Masquerade.  Just having fun over here and making the days count!

March is well under way and its kite flying time!  It is also the month to celebrate Ireland and St. Patrick's Day.

With the ducky done and sent on her way, my thoughts turned to my next project which was to make my first Nursery Planter.  I've struggled over what to call these little seasonal decorations and Nursery Planters seems the best description.  Retro Nursery Planters, Polly Planters, Jolly Planters, Parade Planters, and the like, were some of the names I came up with.  In short, you take a vintage planter, fill it with little wool plush toys and assorted ephemera and stick it somewhere to brighten the corner. I've a long way to go towards creating really cool ones, but we all have to start somewhere.  And what I did during the time I was working on the ducky, was buy a few of these 50's kitsch planters.  They can also be called nursery planters as many of their themes revolve around baby things.  Some are downright adorable!  I could go nuts collecting them, and actually sort of did.

While considering what I could use for St. Patrick's Day, I found this pig and barrel planter, and felt it would be a winner with the green ribbon around the barrel.

This little piggy is 5 1/2" tall to give you some idea of scale when seeing what I did with him.

I did some Pinterest poking and found this darling image of a little piggy riding a cart of gold coins pulled by other little piggies.  Pigs and coins have long been a popular European theme for bounty and riches.  So, when you see them on New Year's cards and even Chinese New Year's images, this is what they represent.

Elizabeth had made a little leprechaun early on in her crafting.  He was so darned cute, but there was no pattern for him.  She would later give us a pattern called Elizabeth's Leprechaun, but she used this pattern to make her St. Patrick.  Took me awhile to figure all this out.  She only ever shared photos of what she created, but never talked about them or how she made them.  It's all been rather a puzzle.  Inspiration at best, which is how much of this should be.  Pure inspiration.

What she did with her original leprechaun and other early works, is she fixed them to Mary Engelbreit boxes and boxes of her own

making.  It's been interesting to see the progression of expression she took.  I'm not sure others would be able to pick up on this, but that's what I do.  I study and study and study, then approach the concept.  Do something similar, but make it my own.

So, this little piggy's first prop was my own little leprechaun.  You can see in the photo of Elizabeth's St. Patrick's Day toys, how I came up with my version.  Hers was sewn in pieces meeting at the center, and my approach was to only sew with side seams.  My leprechaun has the wire armature like the Chinaman, and this works for me.

He's carrying a little shillelagh and is perched on the side of the barrel in a patch of grass and wildflowers.   An anthropomorphic shamrock springs up from the barrel with a happy face, and little gold coins spill from the barrel down

the front of the barrel.  These were made double sided and strung together with thread, from sparkly gold scrapbooking paper.  The grass filler is that crinkle paper grass and I bought it in several colors for other nursery planter projects.  

I strung together letters to spell Erin Go Bragh, with wooden shamrock beads strung between the words.

To give the nursery planter a fuller look and a desirable one from behind, I added green gingham bows in two sizes.

This is a happy piece.  The nursery planters should be joyful to look at and a bright spot in any corner.  They'll display well with dolls or books, or on any shelf for knick knacks and wot-nots.  One doesn't have to go to the lengths of creating pieces for them, as filling them with pens and pencils, painting brushes and sewing notions are lovely uses for them

as well.

March is a month of renewal to me.  So many changes are occurring in my life and not all of them are welcome.  I could scream and cry and kick the doors but spending my time creating things that make me and others smile seems a better way to spend that time.

I am not immune to what is going on in the world right now.  I grieve and weep for the lives, both human and animal, in Ukraine.  There is nothing I can do to change this, so I remind myself to stay on task and keep my spirits light for those around me.

I hope the winds of March keep your spirits lifted like so many kites.  I hope the greening and coming of spring bring for you a sense of peace and renewal.  Stay strong.  Love deeply.  Be wonderful.

Love, Melissa 

Elizabeth's St. Patrick's Day pretties.

In like a lion, out like a lamb.

The other side.

Bernie

Violaine