Woolen ears for a pussycat

This little pussycat needs her woolen ears.  I cut a very large length of Pendleton wool duffle fabric following a rough “ear-like” template.  I added textile dyes to create the fur shades  of this cat, which takes a full day to dry completely. The face painting is not completed, but I was eager to show you this next step.  Adding the woolen fur won’t keep me from continuing to add details and refine the painting of the face. 

I tack the wool with straight quilting pins to get a sense of how much excess fabric I want to work into my impression of cat fur.  I use a 5 inch doll needle and Cordonette thread to stitch the wool through the stuffed doll head, creating the ears and the fur around the face.  I will shape the ears by cutting away the excess fabric and pleating or tucking to give expression.  Once that’s done, I can decide what I want to add as furnishings (and will trim away or fringe the gessoed canvas from the initial face mask that are sticking up as strange triangles) i’ll again use textile dyes to shade the inner ears and the ear edges.  Because this will be a Norwegian Forest Cat, there will also be a nice fluffy ruff added to the neckline made from angora or cashmere fibers.

At this phase, she looks just plain goofy, but I decided to share the weird as well as the attractive parts of my work process.

A wardrobe for a dress-up dolly

These are a few detail shots from the creation of a tiny glen plaid pleated wool skirt, blouse, jacket and poncho for a dress up dolly.  Her blouse is cut from a vintage cotton batiste handkerchief with detailed embroidery.  I cut the blouse pieces to allow the hem designs to be showcased on the blouse front and collar points.  Maybe I’ll get that sewn together, along with her jacket, tomorrow.  The little gray flannel jacket with fringed edges is patterned after a Chanel jacket with raglan sleeves.  I have a selvedge trim for the jacket too, just like CoCo Chanel made popular! The tweed poncho has a velvet collar that was once a sleeve on a dramatic smoking jacket.  I have so much fun gathering up bits of vintage textiles that would be too small for almost anything but a doll wardrobe!