Digging up the whole thing!

Last spring I redesigned my tiny front yard. Today I talked with two men who are going to do a lot of work for the rest.  A retaining wall is needed to hold a sloping back end of the lot and then we will gravel that area. There will be a walk way and a patio paved and all grass removed from the whole lot.  My Daughter Cheryl grieves at this as she loves grass.   Some areas will be paved, some mulched for planting and some graveled with a few bushes in the gravel.  The sunniest part will be left open for planting tomatoes and squash and so forth.  Do you grow lemon mint for iced tea? I do, you can't buy things like that in the market.  The back end of the lot is where my bird feeders are and I will plant some yaupons there for berries and some redbud trees for perching. My glassed in porch looks at that area.  Because of the feeders and the bird bath it is already a bird filled area. 

 I will need a lot of plants.  Today I bought a Tulip Magnolia or Solangiana. I have loved them for years and years but not tried to keep one here in Fredericksburg. They do not like this soil, however I will pamper it with acid fertilizer.   This baby is about 2 feet tall and has some buds. I soaked it well in its black plastic pot tonight.  I believe in talking to plants and welcomed it with encouraging words.   To bring in a baby magnolia is a commitment. In the heat of summer many buckets of bath water will likely have to be carried to supplement our once a week watering.   The only other high water needs plant I have is the miniature magnolia "Little Gem". Like the Solangiana it is more a bush than a tree in this climate.

Replacing the lawn with paving and gravel and mulch and using drought resistant  plants is the objective here.  My heart turns to camellias and azaleas and gardenias and magnolia grandiflora. I remember a gentler south from my Dallas childhood.   

This has been a full day, with much coming and going, with people here plus several trips out. Tomorrow looks to be another one. I will go early  to a store having a sale on the pavestones I need for my yard, (250 of them to start with) which a neighbor man will haul for me in his trailer, and then to Mr Gatti’s for Great grandson Jackson’s 5^th birthday celebration. Out of town relatives will be here for that as well as local little schoolmates.   He is a darling little boy, so good to his very difficult little sister. Macy is a force of nature! They are lots of fun to watch.   After the party at noon I will be back out shopping for plants.  I hope it is warming up for all my friends north of me!  Best, Edyth

 

 

Trees are budding, this winter is almost over.

This is that time of the year when I want to plant the entire seed catalog! My whole winter salad garden perished in the last deep cold.  It had hug on for over 2 months of colder than usual temps for this part of central Texas, where we usually get very little winter.  The weather forecast for the coming two weeks would encourage me to wait a bit yet before planting again and declaring Spring. 
But someone among the wee folk is not waiting!  The urgency of a little Bewick wren gathering bits of mulch from my garden this morning stirred me to hunt my redware bird bottles. These are the familiar ones from Williamsburg.  Daughter Beth's husband Gary came to mount the bottles high up under the eaves of the house.  Under the eaves the sun cannot overheat the clay bottles and stifle the nestlings. 
There are some spots along the back yard fence that I would enjoy seeing the nests more, but those fence tops are highways for a surprising amount of wildlife. Through out the day the squirrels run back and forth and at dusk and after, the highway along the fence top is used by possums and raccoons.  I see tracks and small excavations in my garden from these nocturnal visitors. Who know how many cats might also climb there.  
Gary placed slender dowels in the prepared groves for perches and the small houses are empty and I hope inviting.  One of the bottles was a gift from a friend and the other a tag sale find. If the little male wren chooses to move into one I will post that here.  e

Country Antique show today in Boerne

My friend Linda drove us and we arrived just as the doors opened this morning. It is a beautiful day in the Texas Hill Country, perfect weather for attending a small show about 50 miles from Fredericksburg. In years back Jack and I used to show there and I have many happy memories of those times. I visited with quite a few friends and had a nice time in general. Linda and I had both pledged just to look and not buy. 

She ended up with a very nice basket of an unusual form and a Skookums Doll.   I found a nice little Stieff squirrel for my daughter Cheryl and a doll chair. 

It is known that izannah Walker made some small furniture. I have not seen any documentation as to what that furniture looked like. I do know that this type of small ladder back chair is often found and or used with the Walker dolls.  Over and over I have seen these chairs pictured with the dolls and have not often seen the chairs for sale. They are a bit pricey to me.  So today was my day and even though the original seat is gone and replaced with very inappropriate cane, I am happy to bring home the little chair in original paint and having no other repairs or replacements. 
I will seek some shall diameter "paper rush" which I know how to use and replace the seat. 

If you have a chair similar to this green example, please send photos to me and I will add  them here to this same post.  I have a similar sized one Jack bought for me years ago at Brimfield. Nice old blue paint on that one but not the same kind of chair.

 

Monday postscript...  Collector friend sent a picture of a sweet small doll chair with her Izannah Walker doll. This little chair looks older and handmade rather than the manufactured one I purchased at the antique show.

 

 

Doll maker Paula Walton sent photos of some of her small chairs. Two of these are just like the one I have.  I would like to find out where these were manufactured.  A company like Joel Ellis that made the doll carriages could have made these.  The paint on the chairs is not typical of what we see on the buggies.  E

 

 

Off Topic, my broccoli is making sweet heads!  All of the beets froze in the recent extreme cold. Normally here beets are ok in the winter. The life of a farmer is ever challenging.

 

 

Busy with doll sewing on these very cold days

I know it has been a long time between posts. I have been making replacement bodies for antique doll heads for a few weeks now. I feel if I don't complete these dolls now I might never do it.  So I am pleased as Punch to have this going well. Tonight the 6th one is sitting on the vanity letting her glue dry over night. These last two are labeled Greiner dolls, big girls 33 inches tall. Pictures below of some of my darlings plus the old lady herself in a selfie at 11 tonight.

This tiny china lady with a bun hair do is very choice.

 

 

And the little red hen said....

A nice group of chinas all with covered wagon style hair do's

 

I hope to get a nice large china done before I quit for this round. It already feels so good to have these pretty far along. E

 

 

I had an email a little while ago about this post and here is my answer to it:

Hello Pat, Thank you for writing, nice to hear from you.  I need to do a tutorial on making bodies for china and other shoulder heads and put it on YouTube for people to access easily.   I will likely never get to that.  I will try to answer a little of your email here. First I use Morning glory polyfil to stuff the bodies with.  There are other good ones and some not so good.   

 I like plain Elmer’s glue to attach the heads. I leave them a full 12 hours sitting up to dry. I place them on my bathroom vanity on a paper towel in case some excess glue should drip down.  If it does I used too much or in the wrong place where the china is not snug against the stuffed fabric torso..   The shoulder head should fit the torso, not have to be forced down hard over it.  This forcing onto an over full body breaks many a papier mache doll’s shoulders.  When you push on polyfil it pushes back. Never use sawdust, it will eventually rot the fabric it touches, and sooner sometimes than you think.  Real cotton is a great stuffing if you are lucky enough to have that.  Wool feels nice and works well but draws insects and you do not know where the doll might be stored later in its existence, I want to say “life” because they are almost alive to me.

  If needed to keep the head in place, a long strip of bias tape is good to wrap round the doll’s neck to waist and around and back several times and pin in place til dry.  You might keep a piece for this and reuse it.  Be sure to set the head in place well, I work in front of a big mirror so I do not get it crooked or turned up or down.

 I rarely sew through the sew holes of the china head, and if I do, I pull a small piece of ribbon or twill tape through the holes in the shoulder head and sew those down to the front and back of the body. Much better than trying to sew through the holes. This extra safeguard is good for a very heavy or large head.  Put the ribbon or tape in place before gluing on the head, and sew the tape ends down after all is dry.  Of course you can use just the sew holes and no glue.

I am sorry I do not have a good source of china hands and feet to recommend. I will be glad to pass along anything sent in by readers.  They are sometimes available at doll shows.  I have a large supply bought years ago, and I supplement it with porcelain hands and feet from Ebay or RL.   I keep boxes of extra doll parts.  Often they do not fit the one I bought them for and I must try again.  Be sensitive to what is and is not a good style for heads of a given era. Look at a lot of all original dolls.

 The little china hands and feet need to be tightly attached. I sew a sleeve/tube large enough to turn right side out over the piece.  I place for instance a china arm in the sewn sleeve with the wrong side out. On the end of the china arm, I gather a thread and pull it tight and then wrap it twice around the arm keeping the thread in the grove it should have, and knot it.  Then I turn the extra fabric back out of the way and put a tiny line of Elmer’s glue on the end of the china arm. Pulling the fabric back over this to glue it to that edge gives extra insurance against loss later.   Now turn the fabric sleeve right side out and voila! An arm read to stuff lightly and sew in place.   The part of the arm or leg closest to the torso should not have any stuffing, (top of the fabric tube.)  This allows them to fold well. 

    Have a great time with your growing doll family, Edyth

 

 

For Cathy Thoughts on working with rummage wool.

It feels good to me to re use things and make something useful again.  Rug Hooking, as  I am familiar with it in this country, began as a recycling craft.  I like that.  Rugs were made from worn textiles of wool and other fibers. The Grenfell mats are made of stockings. Many old rugs have a lot of cotton knits. Yarn was sometimes used in among woven textiles. A wide variety of fibers have been used to hook rugs. Wool has proven to be a favorite for most ruggers over time.  To start with, wool sheds dirt rather than holding on to it as does cotton.  For another reason wool takes dye well, keeping it's color better than many fibers. And wool has that little tooth or burr to each fiber which helps felt the surface of a rug and hold  it together.  It is pleasant to work with and has a nice hand to it. So contemporary rug hookers overwhelmingly choose to work with wool.  This discussion is about wool therefore.

Looking at rugs in general, most of them have quiet backgrounds and livelier central motifs. Yes I know red backgrounds are beautiful and they happen!  but in general a large part of a rug is neutral or low key in color and just the center of interest has the higher accents.  It is possible to have a lot of rug wool at minimum cost by recycling.  Some of it can be over dyed to provide more exciting colors. Or that wool can be bought by the yard. A big advantage to dying your own is the intentional color variation of hand dyed wool.

 

 

The rooster rug was my first one. The background was made from swatches of three different short coats, and the bodies of the chickens were from a man's heavy dark overcoat. Only the reds had to be purchased of more expensive hand dyed wool which I had not then learned how to make for myself. So most of this rug was made from as is rummage wool.

 

 

Colors for the simple whale could be found from rummage wool without hand dying at all.  Adding rummage wool to your stash is time well spent for most of us and is fun besides.

 

Start with closets at home. A good Pendleton plaid skirt may turn up unworn for a year or so. Searching for good 100% wool garments in tag sales or thrift shops is a good next step.  Let friends know you are using these things so they will not toss them out when closets are cleaned this spring.

 

In selecting pieces to buy, blankets are too heavy and thick. Coats often are too.  (These items can be used for wool appliqué craft work.)  Skirts are better than shirts, because there is less work and larger pieces come from skirts than shirts or Jackets. Jackets are the least to be favored because of the small pieces and more work to take apart. Second to Skirts for me are wool trousers.  Do not get worsted found in a lot of wool men's wear. Desirable wool is a medium heavy flannel.  Beautiful Pendleton plaids make those shirts with their little darts and many seams still worth having. I do not use pure black. Dark brown or dark grey is as deep a value as I use.

 

Note here: Why not blends? Why do I say 100% wool only? One reason is the superiority of the wool after you have it in a rug. Another is the inability of many blends to take up the dye evenly. A huge reason is that the cutter blades on a strip cutter will dull in a single session if forced through blends!  Never put anything except wool through a conventional strip cutter that has blades. If you have a blended fabric you wish to use, hand cut it with scissors.  You will hear and feel the difference when you try to tear the fabric to make usable swatches.   The wool says th th softly. The blend says CRICK CRICK ack ack ack  harshly. Try it I am not exaggerating. 

 

When other fibers were used in some of our antique rugs, they were hand cut, not put through our expensive little strip cutting machines. 

 

When I bring home rummage wool, I take it straight from the plastic bag to the washing machine.  If any slight preparation is needed before washing,

like removing shoulder pads, I do that outside but generally do not like to handle someone's dirty clothing.  No chances must be taken that might bring in moths or silver fish bugs.  So into the washer it goes, on warm not hot and for a gentle cycle just a short time with normal laundry detergent. Too much agitation or hot water will result in hard felted wool, ruined as far as I am concerned.

 

Dry the wool with a gentle tumble on low heat and remove when you can and just let it be in the air, fluffy and soft we hope.   Now it is time to cut away seams and zippers and hem tape and waist bands, all of that can go in the trash.   By snipping along an edge, tear the big pieces of wool and make swatches about 4 inches wide and however long you can.  Do not shorten them, the length is desirable. Fold these swatches and stack them in a neat bundle tied with a bit of wool like a seam you have cut off.   They are ready now to be pulled out and put through your strip cutter for use in your next project.    E

Thoughts on being 83

 

Mostly I have been sewing for my dollies this week. It is cold for our area, and I am going in and out covering and uncovering my winter garden.

I am grateful to God for having had a better year and my birthday wish is for another in good health also.  This assessment is relative, old age is not for sissies!  I feel very fortunate to have so much family close by and in my daily life.  I am trying hard to accept the loss of my sweetheart,  understanding that we are part of nature and winter comes. 

 

 

 E.

 

 

Some things you lose the knack for.

 I am 83 this month.  I was 23 when I first began to make bodies for old china heads, ordering the arms and legs at first from Kimport.   They were ceramic but not porcelain. Gradually I found better parts from mailing lists and advertisements in Hobbies magazine.  I used the same patterns for my original cloth dolls as I did for replacement bodies on old doll heads.  In my forties and fifties I could really turn out batches of them, drawing off many torsos and stitching and turning them to replenish my parts box as needed. Then I could reach for several and try them to a doll head and stuff as I used them

I developed the patterns in a huge number of sizes, some thin ones and some fuller ones.  Then came a long stretch when I made almost zero dolls after having made and or restored several hundred.   

I was 74 when the house burned, 75 before I set about to try to restore some and make fresh bodies for some and rebuild a doll collection, never to have the prizes I once had, as our shop was gone after the fire and we did not make the long buying trips to New England.  Jack and I both wondered if I still could sew the doll bodies. Hands are different as well as minds. Things change. Many things I used to do I no longer can although I try!   I found I could really turn them out again, with the spur of all those repainted papier mache heads, their bodies gone.   For several months I made about one a week while we were in a rental house watching for a house we could move into.  These were great big dolls.  Then they needed clothing!  Ugh I do not like to dress them.   Never found it easy at all and less than ever now.  One reason I like the really big ones is that they can wear antique clothing in a child’s size.

 A large number of projects and parts are still part of my collection as I am winding it down.  Now  I have pulled all the bodiless heads from drawers and boxes and want to see if I can get some back to being dolls and not just parts with their pitiful lost expressions looking up at me.  Friend Linda came today and set up my little featherweight and oiled it for me and it sews!  Not with pep and vigor, but with a lovely stitch.  

 

 Tonight a small parian doll is sitting propped up on my bathroom counter to dry the glue holding her head on her new body. I think tomorrow will bring another small one to completion.  I will picture them here on this same post soon.   Once I have them back to being whole they have a doll's existence again, and someone sometime will see to dressing them.    I have not had a machine set up to sew in at least two years now.  I am pleased to have it. Thankfully some things I have not lost the knack for.  e

I believe all three of these small heads date in the 1850's.