Comfort Doll

This is a Barb doll, otherwise known as a comfort doll.  Mine is a lot smaller than Barb's as it's only my first one and I had to do the needle felting by hand and Barb has a fancy embellisher to do it for her.  I think the face may be a little bit too big, but I didn't have any smaller face molds for the clay.  I used black, but coated it with a layer of micaceous iron oxide before baking in order to take the perfect pearls.  I used silk rods, merino wool tops, silk waste and bamboo wool to needle felt into the piece of felt.  I then cut out a random shape.  Using my sewing machine I attached another piece of felt to the back leaving an opening to put stuffing in.  Once stuffed, I sewed the hole up.  I glued the bamboo hair to the clay head and then glued the head to the body.

Clay Crosses

When we were on holiday Martin found some beautifully decorated crosses.  I decided I'd have a go at making some out of clay.  I experimented with black and a mixture of brown clays.  Before baking I coated them in micaceous iron oxide so they would take perfect pearls easier.

And this is how they turned out.  The black one was covered with the interference perfect pearls collection and various metallics were used on the brown mix.  I threaded beads onto two pieces of wire, worked a spiral from the centre and wrapped it around the crosses.

Clay Projects

I painted a piece of corrugated in green patina eco friendly paint.  Attached a piece of fabric to the top half, singed a piece of green organza and stapled it to the corrugated.  I wrapped the clay pieces around a kebab stick, stamped into the clay and made some holes to enable me to sew them down.  Before baking I covered the clay pieces with micaceous iron oxide to enable me to add perfect pearls after baking. I painted the kebab stick and added a bead to each end.

The clay piece on the left was made as above, the other piece was laid flat and stamped into.  Strips of fabric have been sewn onto the scrunched paper background which has been coloured with brusho.  The thick piece of wool fibre has been couched onto the piece.  The green jute was machine sewn and a piece cut out to house the clay piece.  Singed organza was used to house the second clay piece which was sewn on with embroidery threads.  Finally I added a pre dyed silk cocoon which I got from Harrogate and placed some mohair inside it.  I just need to decide what to mount it on.

I machine sewed various fibres to the scrunched paper background, again coloured with brusho.  Singed three pieces of rose coloured organza and inlaid each piece of stamped clay sewing down using the pre made holes.  I machine sewed the piece of green jute.  I covered the whole thing with a piece of chocolate coloured tulle, machine sewed around the edges, cut diagonally across the middle and then cut those pieces in half again.  Using the heat tool I singed the tulle away from the middle and it attached back on itself on the outside pieces. I sewed on three wooden beads to finish.