Meet the Party Dolls...

Our Fiber Art Bee had a fun swap for our Christmas party this year. Each participant made a "spirit doll" to trade. This was after an interesting program on the topic presented by one of our members in the fall. This girl is one that I made to trade. She's fashioned from hand-dyed fabrics, lace, embroidery, beads, silk flowers, and a shrink plastic charm. I call her the Flower Girl.

And this is the doll I received in the swap. i just love her and she will join several other Art Warrior dolls I've made. I'll show some close-ups of the various elements in a future post since this is a photo-heavy post. Merri added many creative touches, front and back.

Our photo recorder took pictures of each doll with the recipient and maker. Mine was made by Merri McKenzie, right, who, with her sister Celeste Beck, taught classes on making these dolls. You can see three of the dolls I made in their classes here, and now the dolls have a little sister! Perfect! Merri also made her fascinator- so festive.

While making the Flower Girl, I also made a second so I could decide which one to swap. I get to keep the Pink Flower Girl, made from ice-dye fabric, trims, beads and embroidery. But she came along for show-and-tell. The dolls are very relaxing to make somehow.

This array of bags was on display while we ate our holiday meal and waited out the suspense of seeing what they contained.

There was such a wonderful variety of dolls. I drew my free-form doll pattern after seeing some of these embellished dolls on Pinterest. This is another one- a mermaid that is heavily embellished. Some members even got creative with the gift bags!

This is the colorfully stamped bag my doll arrived in.

I thought you might like to see the back of the doll as well- not as fancy, but still stitched and embellished.

Blog reader Elizabeth asked about a YoYo quilt I mentioned in a previous post. When taking the doll photos, I placed the vintage quilt in the photo in case others were unfamiliar with a YoYo quilt. They are made by cutting a circle of fabric (all sorts in this case, from silks to cottons to home dec fabric). The quilter stitches around the circle with a gathering stitch and then pulls the thread taut, drawing the edges to the center and forming a YoYo. These are then whipstitched together in rows, forming the quilt top. Of course some do not think of these as "quilts" since there is no batting or backing-rather they refer to them as coverlets.

Here's the back of the pink flower girl.

She, too is posing with the vintage YoYo quilt that was gifted to me.