Esme's Sunflower of Ukraine

Just for today.  Just for now, and the next few minutes, let's celebrate the sunflower.

I can remember when my husband and I first moved to Auburn, California.  We'd lived in Silicon Valley amidst traffic and the growing congestion of the high-tech industry.  I grew up there in Sunnyvale.  Back then it was fruit orchards and canneries, like Libby.  We could walk down the street and pick sweet apricots and cherries from every front yard where the trees were ignored.  We bicycled past orchards of fruit just begging to be sampled and savored, and it was a child's life. 

Time and tide, and I found myself living on 4.5 acres in what seemed at the time, the middle of nowhere.  At least that's how it felt after escaping the city.  My husband learned how to garden when he was just a boy, and his grandfather's farm was a haven to him.

One of the first things we did to the place, was eradicate all the blackberry and star thistle, and he built us a garden where we could grow our own vegetables.  It was thrilling and novel to me as each year I could help cultivate pumpkins to spread around the yard and home at Halloween.  We still grow corn in summer, and it was fun to build corn shocks for fall to put those pumpkins around.  But the loveliest and most wonderful plant we ever grew was the sunflower.  How tall they grew!  So brilliant and strong.  I loved watching as squirrels and birds alike fed merrily on them.  

I was never one for drying them for the seeds, and they were perfect summer color and nutrition for the wildlife around us.

Sunflowers were cultivated in North America as far back as 3000 B.C.  They were originally developed for food, medicine, dye, and oil.  Later, they were exported to the rest of the world by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. 

Tsar Peter the Great was so fascinated by the sunflowers that he saw in The Netherlands, that he took some back to Russia.  They became popular for their oil, and by the early 19th century, the northern countries were planting millions of acres of sunflowers every year.

Sunflowers were already Ukraine's national flower before they emerged as a symbol of resistance.  This came to pass when a widely shared video clip appeared showing a Ukrainian woman berating Russian soldiers, telling them to put sunflower seeds in their pockets so that flowers would grow after they died in battle.

Quickly, the beautiful sunflower was being drawn, painted, made into emojis, turned into beautiful art, again, and who knew better of the sunflower's magical appeal, than Vincent Van Gogh, himself?  Many poems have been written of the sunflower as its quality of following the sun from morning till

night, turning its lion mane head in the process.

I was having another sleepless night and thinking what next I could do to soothe my weary mind and dig deep in a project that would bring me comfort.  A little lightbulb went off, and tiny, 6" Esme, popped into my mind with the creating of a sunflower dress for her.  I saw it all in a split second from the blue Valenki boots to the band of red roses on her head.

So that morning I got up, pulled my wool colors together and snipped a sunflower petal off one of the faux sunflowers in the arrangement on the side table for a pattern.  Esme would be needing a new floral gown anyway, as spring is here and her holly outfit needed to be retired to her box.

I made this up on the fly using her panty pattern to make her another olive-green pair, and constructed a brown bodice to support the brilliant yellow petals.  Each little petal is machine 

stitched with ribs, then each petal was sewn at the base in a pinch.  I pinked a green band and sewed it to the bodice, then hand-stitched two rows of the petals on.  

I was so surprised when the machine stitching allowed the petals to be formed upwards to float.  Creating this costume for her gave me a little bit of peace and purpose, and she can stand on my shelf as hope for the future in sunflower glory.

I've been collecting some beautiful art works to share on FB each day, and I'd like to share them with you now.  I hope the brilliant colors lift your spirits as much as they do mine.

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.  It's what sunflowers do." - Helen Keller

Love,

Melissa

Gorgeous watercolor by Ukrainian artist MisTery

A little Victoriana

Once upon a time...

Ahri on the banks of Kyiv

 

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

 

Good Luck Gracie's Chinaman Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day!  Each year I forget how much I truly enjoy this remembrance.  I got so caught up in Chinese New Year this February that I almost forgot how much I loved all the adorable, vintage Valentines of my youth and before.

It was while browsing and picking out some new ones to share this year, that I happened upon this crafter's blog called Creative Breathing.  I instantly liked the name of the blog, but this woman's felt dolls and anthropomorphic toys sent me reeling with delight.  I instantly decided to make a mini version of her New Year Chinaman.

She'd posted a pattern for her readers to make one for themselves and shared the story of how one of her readers had seen him and asked her to make one for her for her newly adopted children from China.   

The artist's husband traveled a lot and she spent her time, as I 

do, amusing herself with her creations, and filling her space with joyful things.  Sadly, her last post was in 2014, or I would have followed her religiously.  

With pipe cleaner legs, and wool felt, she created come-to-life vintage Valentines.  Her embroidered faces are divine and making Gracie a mini version of the New Year Chinaman, gave me further practice with this.  That pink clock is to die for!

Since I was making him up so close to Valentine's Day, I decided to create for him a heart banner instead of the New Year's one.

This also made him unique and special just for Gracie.  As you can see, he's about the same size as her Lucky Tiger.  About 4".  There was no indication in her blog posting how tall her Chinaman was, but I'd guess about 9" - 10", maybe a bit larger.  The pattern was free drawn and had no directions on how to make or assemble him, so once again, I was winging it.

The little Valentine Chinaman has pipe cleaner attaching his head to his body.  I folded the end of it up on the pipe cleaner stem for his arms.  His two black pipe cleaner legs are not locked so I can adjust them to help him stand.

He has a full body that's stuffed with fill, and his ears are sewn into the sides of his gently stuffed head.  

He "wears" red gloves.  The embroidered frog closure design has French knots on the ends. Since he's so small, I used only one thread to embroider his face.

I added a Chinese collar to the outfit.

Since the hat was so tiny, I added a pom-pom to the top instead of the frou-frou she added.

Not being able to see the back of her doll, I decided that his little head need a Chinese queue. 

The black pipe cleaner for the legs is bent at the bottom for his feet and poked through the top shoe piece with the bottom shoe piece finishing the feet.  I used a 2mm crafting hole punch to push the pipe cleaner through the wool felt.

Now Good Luck Gracie has two dolls to hold or display with.  As the year goes on, and other Chinese celebrations come along, I may make her more toys.  She can help me celebrate all year long.

I would like to explore making my own anthropomorphic felt dolls and may have to find a little Valentine clock to begin with!

Below are some favorite Valentines for this year.  The two with the pink floral back drop are ones I purchased for my collection.  Attached, also, is the Valentine display in Creative Breathing's room.  It's absolutely awesome!

Wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day!  My husband's kind of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to Hallmark holidays, but I create my own fun and with the help of Creative Breathing this Valentine's Day was a joy!

Love, Melissa

 

Lantern Festival Cissy

Hello my lovely friends!  Just sitting here enjoying a comforting cup of jasmine tea in my pretty Year of the Tiger mug.  After it became apparent that the first shipment was never going to make it here, the seller overnighted a replacement for me.  Unfortunately, this all didn't commence until after February first, but I'm happily drinking cup after cup of "good luck" tea now.  Chinese New Year lasts fifteen days, and I've been enjoying scratching off a fortune each day from this pack of Chinese New Year fortune cards that I bought.  We make our own fun, and why not?  I could make a month-long celebration of any holiday or theme just by sewing something special for a doll!

After finishing Good Luck Gracie, I'd received four tiny crochet dolls (amigurumi) from the artist that makes them for me.  I'd asked her to make the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, along with Marley's ghost.  They weren't going to be done in time for last Christmas, so I asked her to 

take her time with them.  And, by the way, they came out adorable!  But she had asked me how my tiger came out.  Tiger?  What tiger?  It was then that I remembered that I asked her if she thought she could crochet me a Chinese New Year tiger.  Realizing he would be a skinny little doll, I thought best to needle felt him myself.  Then I got busy with Good Luck Gracie and forgot all about him!  So, when she asked how he turned out, guilt hit me, and I got my needle felting stuff out and made the tiny tiger.  He was the perfect size for Gracie, so I tucked him into her arms.  The story is, she received her cuddly toy from Grandmother at one of the dinner festivities.  Below you'll see a photo of Gracie with him and a close up of the tiger.  I did not make up this design.  It was inspired by a crochet pattern I found on Pinterest.  

Shortly after I finished the tiger, I'd been thinking about the Lantern Festival, which falls on the 15th of the month.  It's the final celebration of Chinese New Year falling on the first full moon of the lunar year.  If I had not mentioned it, Chinese New 

Year's date is chosen by the date of the first new moon of the lunar new year. During this two-week cycle families still gather and there are observations of keeping taboos in check.  On the night of the Lantern Festival, streets and homes are decorated with colorful lanterns, often with riddles written on them.  People eat sweet rice balls called tangyuan, watch dragon and lion dances, and set off fireworks.

The festival can be traced back 2000 years, with Buddhist origins.  Ruling the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Emperor Hangmindi heard that some monks lit lanterns in their temples to show respect to Buddha on the 15th day of the first lunar month and respectfully followed suit. 

The lighting of lanterns symbolizes illuminating the future.  It is a way for people to pray for a smooth future and good luck for their families.  I think it's a beautiful custom.  There isn't much that doesn't intrigue me about the Chinese culture.  With this in mind, I chose one more doll to give a Chinese New Year outfit to.  I'm planning on sewing more for Cissy this year anyway, and I recalled this outfit on a vintage pattern that would be perfect

to make up.  I loved the illustration on the pattern front and decided to make it up just like the picture and follow the directions to a "t".  I may have to read them several times to figure it out, but this was definitely one of easier patterns to follow.  I'm grateful this Etsy seller made these vintage patterns available for us.

Cissy's Lantern Festival outfit is what they called pajamas back in the 50s.  To me, it's a hostess outfit to wear for a dinner party, and this year Cissy will host her own Lantern Festival dinner party.  The outfit is entirely made up from Shantung silk.  I even followed the directions for using bias tape for the trimming of the sleeve and neck edges, as well as making the frog closures.  However, I made my own bias tape from the red silk.  I had to try this.  Personally, I think real bias tape would be too chunky and large to work with, but out of silk it went very smoothly, although it was definitely a lot of fiddly work.

There are many ways to make frog closures and someday I'd like to try them with Chinese knots, in miniature of course.

What I loved about this pattern were the side slits at the hems of the pants and jacket.  Making this pattern taught me how to do this correctly and what I'd have to do when drafting my own pattern for something similar.

The tediously little frog closures were made by "opening" the bias tape, ironing it flat, sewing the edge 1/8" and turning the doggone thing inside out by attaching a thread and needle at one end.  With silk it was a breeze.  Out of study normal bias tape, it would have been a nightmare.  My tape was 1" wide.  

You cut a 3" piece, make a knot in the center of four pieces then slip stitch the ends together in the center.  Same for the unknotted pieces, but you leave a hole for the knot on the other side to go through.  I hand-stitched these eight pieces on, but it wasn't specified how you should sew them on.

Just the back view.  The jacket even has pockets which I love.

For Cissy's hair, I made little Chinese clip-ons.  Ruby Red Galleria makes these for their doll outfits and I love them.  Mine are not as elaborate, but I did order a ton of these very tiny hair clips back when I was first sewing for Peggy Sue and used them for bow clips.

Cissy's hair clips have "cherry blossoms" on them and three graduating chains ending in tiny pearls.

I made her a pair of red tassel earrings to go with the outfit since the tiny gold fortune cookie charms weren't going to arrive anytime soon. I loved this pattern and will most likely make a second one, maybe with full length pants in aqua and yellow silks.  We can make her the fortune cookie jewelry for that outfit.

Earlier I'd been looking for paper lantern crafts on Pinterest and found this image which led me to a website that had pdf files of tiger lanterns.  If you printed them out on A4 and in portrait, they'd be perfect for a doll.  I made one of the tiger ones (see final photo), but decided I was being lazy and I ought to get to work, so made up a cherry blossom lantern in the same manner.

Cissy's cherry blossom lantern was made from using the image of a paper or wallpaper, then folding and cutting the lantern shape as the tiger one was.  I added gold paper to the top and bottom and used it also for the handle.  For the dangling "charm", I found a Double Happiness image and glued it to a gold paper circle.  The charms are the same image back and front.  

So, the theme of Cissy's cherry blossom hair clips are continued with the lantern. I've enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year with my dolls, and now Valentine's Day is coming up.  Rachel of the Virtual Doll Convention offered a Club Grace outfit for Valentine's Day that was pink with white polka-dots.  I might make Dolly Dingle a dress to go with it, but I'm not sure.  I do need to get both dolls out of their Christmas wear.  And the color theme would last through Easter if you think about it.  Decisions, decisions.  I have a big project I want to begin, so maybe I should do that first.

I hope you've enjoyed learning a little about Chinese New Year and some of the traditions.  I love that the Lantern Festival falls on the full moon.  I'm a moon watcher and this make it all the more special this year.  I 've attached some beautiful photos of Lantern Festival in China, and one of the "soup" with the sweet rice balls.  No, they are not eggs.  This is must have treat and the roundness of the balls symbolizes wholeness and completeness.  The sweet taste symbolizes a sweet and happy life.  How fun to eat special foods that are symbolic!

Wishing you all a happy Valentine's Day.  Is it any wonder that I also collect vintage Chinese Valentines, ephemera and New Year's cards?  Some are simply gorgeous!  Always inspirational.

Love, Melissa