What to say after it's been about a 16-months hiatus since I've posted anything here? I can say that I got some things cleared away from my backlog of projects or just simply dropped, leaving less things on the back burner of my mind. I can say that I have changed some of my old habits, working out what tends to do better for me at different times of the day. I like to say that I'm in a better place in my life in comparison to where I was last year but I don't seem to feel that. However, that's probably a good thing as I can be motivated to keep improving myself until I start to feel happier.
As I'm starting to make all this purging more of a timed-weekly chore list rather than stuff to take up my free time in-between my work shifts, I'm getting what I want to do as an artist worked. It is about time I start to do this more professionally rather than as a side-hobby. I'll reveal how I plan to in the near-future.
In the meantime, I might as well show you some photos from one of my projects that I cleared off last year. Or you can click/tap away from this page for something else, it's up to you.
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One of the longer projects was my scarecrow doll project, taking a lot of the scrap fabric to use up for a halloween decor idea. Depending of some features, it took weeks to get one of them done. For the 1st half of the year, I was getting all 4 of them sewn and stuffed into blank sitting dolls:
- Sawing and gluing wood scraps into a weighted head spikes for styrofoam heads.
- Drawing out the templates for their fabric limbs.
- Cutting out multiple sheets of limb templates from discounted canvas cuts.
- Strenuously Hand-Stitched (Machine-Stitched for some parts thankfully) and Hand-Fluffed & Stuffed all 4 into blank canvas dolls, button eyes and thread smiles.
And that was just before I start working on each one individually by summer time in-between my work shifts. I've worked roughly from July to October to complete 2 of them before Halloween, only to have it pouring rain on the big night (Thank you for front porch awnings).
The first one was a funky mop-head hippie. The hardest and longest part to work on it was the hair, not just for twinning into locks from literally a discounted disposable mop head but the stitching it all in staying in place with multiple cut strands. I remember this took about 3 weeks to do out of its difficulty and having to find another mop-head that came close enough to complete the whole head. After that, I decided to make hats for the rest of them to cut down on all that hand-stitching work.
After many hours and hours of sewing, I took old dried corn leaves or some plant fibres and hot glued to the hem ends of the sleeves for a straw-stuffed look. They looked a bit too long so I trimmed them. I'd also hot-glued some extra decor for finishing touches.
...And after about 2 months' of work, this is its final look. It definitely carry much from the original sketch I drew. It doesn't have many halloween colours but the project was about using up the old materials I had hoarded for a long time.
Now onto the 2nd one, which is a more autumn-coloured country girl. I used a lot of old denim pants' scraps to make her dress, embroidered with some orange threads courtesy of my sewing machine.
After the dress, I did the pointed hat in denim too but made more patch-like with both sides and discoloured wrinkles.
I decided to have a colourful inner-liner for the hat. This took lots of sewing to get every bit of that dollar store-bought dishcloth to fit under but the patchiness works with the hat.
After a few adornments included to the hat and dress, I've moved onto the hair.
Taking unwoven dishcloth strands and dyed raffia fibres left-over from my Scarecrow Angel Makeover project, I've hand-stitched front banes and back hair to weave into a braid. Remembering how much trouble I had for the first one and I didn't have enough "red hair" for the 2nd, I used the hat to cover over the "bald spot," giving the illusional look.
And then after a few additions, voila the second doll is done and just a week before Halloween. Had some trick or treaters said that they liked how they looked.
Well, that's what I got done for this project last year. After putting in about 6-8 months of my spare time into those, I took a break from them, just to take time for clearing other things and to get a gift idea for my niece done. That's part of the old habits I was talking about, how I tend to drift off into other things than to stay focused on my current task/work. Youtube clip-watching while working is another one, should stick to more non-lyrical music videos.
Okay, I'm starting to sound unfocused here, partly for extending my bed time and still am working during this pandemic. But this was a long overdue post that I should've made months ago, a habit that I want to be less tardy about. So, fairly soon, I post up here what I plan for my future work as an artist. Succeed or fail, I'm going to go for it! Laters!
