Mohair momma bird Beratrice and her two sons,Lloyd, and Flit, are now available in my new Etsy shop. The design for Beratrice was taken from one of my computer doodles. I had a lot of fun designing and making her little hat. I draped felt into the shape I wanted and made a pattern from that. I used woven wool fabric for the hat that had been felted and stitched the hat by hand. The little flower on a stalk is a combination of wool felt and woven cotton and has a vintage stamen.
Mohair -- I love the stuff! It's the fleece from Angora goats, sheared like sheep's wool. In another life, it was my favorite fiber for spinning, my favorite hair for dolls, and now I use mohair fabric for my bears and critters. It is soft, fluffy, stiff, matted, long, short, curly, straight, dense, sparse. Like most bear artists, I have a stash of it. (A big stash) I have found that it's not the easiest thing to store, as the fabric is wide, takes on creases where it is folded, and has a pile that I don't want to crush. My mohair is stored on a shelf in my studio closet, each piece rolled (nap outward) into a tube.
When I go to select a piece of mohair for a project, I usually have an image in my mind of what I want to make and have sketched a drawing for reference. I go into my studio closet and start pulling out pieces I think might work well for the design. Soon the floor is covered in various shades of mohair. Then I take 3 to 4 pieces to my work table where I play with and manipulate them into semblences of three- dimensional shapes. I want to see how they react to being curved and bent, how the pile moves and changes, and if the base fabric is visible when the fabric is curved, do I like the effect. I pick one, but the others may be tucked into the back of my mind as possibilities for future projects.
Monday -- The sun is streaming into my studio this morning from the little semicurcular window high on the wall of my studio. We've had snow on the ground since November. A sunny day will be so nice.
Jennifer Robbins' book takes you step-by-step through making a very simple web page and gradually introduces new concepts. There are exercises in each chapter, so it really feels like a class. So far, it is going at an easy enough pace that it is making sense even to me. Jason's Beaird's book covers all aspects of web design including layout, color, images and text.
Sylvie and Dolly are now listed on eBay. She is a whimsical little mohair bear who comes with Dolly, a needfelted companion. She is 7 1/2" tall and has a silk dress and silk embroidered undies. I really enjoyed working on all the details -- the hand-shading, embroidery, silk ribbon flower, etc. You can visit her listing here.