GuardDoll No. 10 "Ocyate"

Ocyate is friendly to whoever gives her a place to stay, but is hostile to any intruders. She will watch over your valuables.

Ocyate measures 23 inches long is constructed from the following: needle-felted wool yarn, commercial cotton fabrics, lace, fabric paint, costume jewelry pin, welded stainless steel, beads, fabric bead armature.

Permian Tide Pool Party--Mixed Media

This is a series of mixed-media, mostly fiber artworks I made for a show at the Bowen Center for the Arts this September (http://www.dawsonarts.org/events.htm). I started with a series of quilted, complex cloths (see March post) and sewed them onto various armatures--sponges, Styrofoam blocks, and jewelry display boxes. Then I embellished them with weird little creatures made from felt, crochet, twisted wire, beads, etc. The end result had sort of a seascape look, if the sea was on another planet. Then I thought about Earth's primeval oceans. That led to the idea of these odd life forms chilling out together in a tide pool, which led to the title of the series: Permian Tide Pool Party I-X. The average piece measures about 8 x 6 x 3 inches.

Mixed media wall hanging

This piece measures 8 x 11 inches. The background consists of a warp made from a crocheted chain of wool yarn; the weft is batik fabric strips. The figure is crocheted and needle felted. The attachments are the faces of six, cheap watches that died premature deaths. Other items in the mix--decorative yarns and beads.

Soft sculpture lizards

These two lizards were crocheted and heavily embellished. They were then mounted on fabric covered sponges. The purple cover consists of woven batik fabric strips. The orange cover is one piece of fabric that is enclosed in beaded wire crochet. Both pieces measure about 8 x 12 x 4 inches.

Red Devil Doll

This doll measures 4.5 x 13 inches and is made of felted wool tubes and strips of fabric.

Hairy Red Monster Doll

Here's the latest addition to my doll collection. This one measures 6.5 inches wide and 18 inches long. I plan to take it to Artomatic 2009 this May. The body was knit on a circular loom and has a toy baseball for armature.

Complex Cloth

These examples of complex cloth were made by creating a collage of hand-dyed & stamped fabric scraps over a foundation fabric such as an old linen napkin, a piece of hand-dyed fabric, or a commercial batik. Sometimes I add pieces of Angelina fiber or short lengths of novelty yarn. Once I achieve a composition that pleases me, I pin a layer of tulle on top and secure the "sandwich" with free-motion quilting. The piece of complex cloth then becomes part of my fabric stash collection to be used later in a specific project where it gets cut up and incorporated into the design, whatever that may be.