SANTA IS HERE!

Santa came to town today. Since I was a little girl, Santa has come to town on the 2nd Saturday in November. All the children know Christmas is not far away, and from this Saturday, they can visit Santa in his Magic Cave (or any of the major stores) and ask for their Christmas wish list. Thousands of families line the streets in the city (which are closed to traffic) and watch the pageant floats and marching bands till the last float that brings Santa to his Magic Cave. My parents took me to the pageant- only a few times - it is always shown on television live, and when my boys were little I took them too. I was even in the pageant once. I was working for the department store that originally organised the pageant, and through a simple process of selection, I was chosen to be on the chimney sweep float. Unfortunately, I was too big for the costume overalls, so I ended up being a clown. There are a lot of clowns in the pageant, and you know the type of costume a clown wears............................

Now the following pictures are not from the pageant, but this is the whole procession heading back down the one of the main roads from the city to the storage facility in the suburbs, not far from where I live.  I had met a friend for coffee and just as we were leaving the cafe, all the floats came rolling down the street - with police escort no less!  It was like being at the pageant!  You can't help but wave at the drivers.  The floats usually have lots of characters all dancing and waving, but the floats without people are spectactular to see - and huge!  It was quite exciting, and I took as many photos as I could with my phone...............

There goes the stardust castle where Santa lives before Christmas.  He loads up his sleigh with his toys and the reindeer come all the way from the North Pole.  If you look really hard you will see the reindeer in front.............

Santa is at the Magic Cave waiting ...................

Quilt show shopping

 

It is strange the things that you get caught up in.

I had made a firm decision that I was not going to buy anything at the show - because I have so much stuff which I am trying to reduce.

But here I am at the beginning of a new week and I have an array of items which I really needed.  I am happy that I did the fabric technique workshop and to my defence I did buy needles and a rotary blade sharpener.  I seem to wear out my blades very quickly.  And then I ended up buying the very pretty Japanese kit to make the string tie bag, and the pattern for the little purse.  My friend made the purse in a workshop, all hand stitched and finished in an hour!  Such a handy little thing - I thought it would be a cute makeup bag, others thought it would be good to keep their pearls in, and another wanted to just use it for sewing notions.  All very practical.  It could even be made out of pieced velvet  - and beaded...................Of course when I bought the pattern for the purse, I saw the bag and then the kit with all the fabrics.................I still wanted to get to the AK Traditions stall to buy the knitted dolly kit............ 

When I am going to have the time to make all these new items, I don't know.  But I liked them and I wanted them and we will just have to see.  I think that's why I like my blog.  I have a record of my plans and projects.......................

Here she is.....

Yes I did finish Pink Campagne..
She is acceptable, but not really the type of doll I want to make.  She may have to be "dismantled" after the weekend...................

It has been a busy weekend with the quilt and craft show here in Adelaide.
I always enjoy the show, there are so many opportunities to see what crafts people are doing.   There are workshops for all manner of crafting and lots of new information and techniques being developed and reinvented.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the doll maker Dorote.

I like the type of doll she makes and the methods she uses.  She works in air dry clay and sometimes makes ball or ribbon jointed dolls, but look at this...........

It has to bee the most beautiful doll I have ever seen.  And I was in awe of the costume.  I was trying to work out how the sheer fabric could be made to hold its bubbled shape.  I searched the web, asked heaps of people andthen decided to take the picture to the show to see if anyone there could work it out. 

Well in a moment of serendipity one of my friends said " I am sure they are doing workshops on that technique at the front - go and ask them"

Well, of course there was a whole stand with chiffon, silk, organza and satins all in various stages of being manipulated into variations of this beautiful technique.  Which is related to the Japanese Shibori and the humble tie dying we westeners use.  The secret is in the .................I wonder if I should tell you?

Maybe next post.

See if you can work it out.

You can see the type of art
Sharyn Hall has on her web site.
Beautiful stuff.........
The fantastic shawl that Sharyn is wearing is an  Issey Miyake

I bought lots of little necessary things, I will show you in the next post.  So much fun, so much to see, so much to buy...................

Pink Champagne...........well not exactly..

I have made some progress.  I have to admit this doll - even though she is a frankenstein doll - is coming together only as an interpretation of the charecter from Moulin Rouge.  So my expectation of how she will look is very low.  She is not a competition doll.  She is only for display for a one off show. I have no burning desire to make and own a Moulin Rouge doll, and she is mostly cloth (which I am not so interested in compared to clay).  So making her at the moment, is quite a liberating experience.  I am not too worried about how wonderful she will look, she just has to look a bit good - if you know what I mean........
But she did go through that 'ugly stage' that happens in doll making - where your creation looks very very bad and you think there is not much you can do to save it.  Well I took a deep breath and accepted I needed to do a bit more to get a better result.  I am trying to make this doll with as little output as I can.  I have used everything from my stash, the one thing I did not have was pink ostrich feathers - which I would not go searching for.  So I went to the $2 store and found a dress up pink feather boa to make into the costume.
I used paper towel to create her costume and stitched it straight onto her body (one good thing about cloth dolls!)  Beading was not a new experience for me, I have lots of beads, but I am just not very creative in that area.  Neverthless, I think the beading works and I quite enjoyed adding the beads to make the costume sparkle.  In the previous photo I had attempted to use a beaded trim from my stash, but it was too heavy for the outfit and I knew I had to redo the whole front with a beaded trim, it took nearly 4 hours to do, but was worth it.  I just hope I don't have to go searching for ostrich feathers because the $2 ones are no good!!

Her shoes have been a challenge, and you can't see it here but I had to add paperclay to creat a heel that will go over the rods in the stand.  I know her legs are really out of shape, and her arms a bit chunky, but I am hoping that with the right pose and all the feathers, you won't really see that flaws.  My poor frankenstein girl.