Art Deco Couple

A commission Art Deco couple

OOAK 12th scale 14cm or 6" tall

An Old Gardener

Commission figure of an old Gardener

12th scale OOAK

'Downstairs' characters

A couple of servants made as commission figures...ooak 12th scale, mixed media.

Hector Bray...antiques & curio collector

Hector Bray in his taxidermy, arts, vintage toys, antiques and curios shop… he has just returned from a trip to deliver some pieces to London, where he saw the Marcel Duchamp at the Tate, and also enjoyed browsing round the boutiques in Notting Hill. He has acquired some rather nice plaster casts of

some ancient skulls he is about to mount and put out on display.

12th scale OOAK figure

Urnes bodice

Completed my Urnes Dragon-Serpent bodice

...mixed feelings on it.

It ended up being something of a nightmare to work...the fabric I chose to use ( it was some old canvas-denim style material I've had knocking about for a long time) was way too thick and stiff to get a needle through for hand sewing, let alone detailed embroidery. I ended up having to leave the design as a very simple outline as I almost punctured my thimble many times even to do this much on there. Then the clasps I had originally found were out of stock, so I had to use these reproduction ones...although by the time I got to that stage I was rather disheartened !!

Nevertheless...it fits well, and I still like the design...and I think with the kind of skirt and blouse shown top right it will suggest the folk costume reasonably well :o)

Recycled Wool latch-hook rug

This is my third latch hook rug...the smallest of the three...and made to use up all my stocks of wool I've collected over the years to hopefully make more space in my work room! I used to do weaving and needlepoint as a teenager, and did a few textiles modules at college, so you collect up a lot of odds and ends. Most of it is 100% wool Axminster and Wilton waste thrums I used to pick up for £1 a huge bag from our local fabric shop, but there's bits of old knitting wool and a little wool tweed cloth as well so the surface is quite interesting. 

Of course once I was underway I needed a few extra bits to heighten the colour here and there...so got a bag of scrap ball-ends for 99p from age concern, not wool these, but they're only a fraction of the whole thing and mixed through it, so it won't matter.

here are some details...I just made the design up as I went along using bit circles of colour depending on how much I had left of anything...and dotted them about, unifying the whole thing with greens.

views of the front and the back...there are about ten thousand insertions into the canvas...all cut, blended, hooked in, tightened and trimmed by hand individually...so it took me about 2 to 3 weeks to complete it. It's quite therapeutic...although my hands did ache a bit towards the end!

...the finished thing...

Is like a wooly garden beneath your toes in front of the fire! :o)