Wouldn't you know, just after I posted about my love of hats, another of my favorite hat loving persons sent me a note to say "hi" (okay, actually I emailed her first to let her know I had a new blog, but the coincidence thing makes a better story, right? :) ). You might not know her, unless you are lucky enough to live in wild and crazy Charleston, where the men are men and the women are all wild :), but she is truly the Queen HATpy Hat Bee of that rip-roaring town. She's none other than the lovely Archie Burkel (http://www.hatladies.org)
Here's a picture of her, so you can see what I mean:
Okay, so let me tell you a little bit about her and then I'll tie that in with, of course, one of my dolls later :)
Lady Archie (you can call her that--I do) is the most marvelous of characters there ever is, was, or ever will be. She is truly one-of-a-kind. She's one heck of a good writer, a beautiful lady who has done everything under the sun, and who spends a great deal of her time commandeering other like-minded, hat loving, hat wearing gals around the Charleston area (and beyond most likely) in all sorts of big headline volunteer activities. She's been in the news, she's been in parades, she's posed nearly naked in pools and done countless other things all to support her main cause, which is basically just to make the world a better, more lovely place to live, and to give others the confidence to jump in the game with her. Oh, and did I mention, she wears hats like nobody else can!
Okay, so how this ties in with dolls...
Several years back, Lady Archie and I had been having a lovely chat session back and forth via the internet, and she just happened to be having an upcoming fund raiser. I agreed to make a doll for her fundraiser and also thought it best to make an actual Archie doll for her, because she is such a good model. How fun that was! I took some pictures of her off her site and set to work. She gave me suggestions (black, white or maybe pink only, daaahling) and I did my best to copy her. Of course she is far more lovely than I could ever portray in manipulated cloth, but I was happy with the final doll and sent it to her. Here's what I came up with:
Anyway, please check out her site, feel inspired, wear a hat or 2, and keep on cranking out the good stuff! Oh, and a final thought -- Lady Archie claims to have dived out of a hot air balloon head first. What I want to know is, how did she keep her hat on?! Hats off to YOU, Archie!
I love hats! A new friend, Stella Pesci, who just so happens to be the mother of Edera Jewelry's (http://www.edera-faerie.blogspot.com)lovely Ivy, just got me thinking about hats again. She is a very fine milliner whom I think is definitely worth checking out: (http://www.stellapesci.etsy.com)
Check out this fun hat she has for sale on her Etsy site:
You might not know that I used to make and sell hats in Seattle for a short time in the early 90s. I had a tiny little business called "Over My Head" and it truly was. I think I had one of the best, if not THE best teachers out there, Wayne Wichern (http://www.waynewichernmillinery.com)
Here is one of his hats from his website. As you can see, he is truly a master.
Back in the early 90s, when I was making hats, Wayne was living in Seattle, and I used to hang out at his Ballard home/studio on Tuesdays for several hours with another friend, Sandy, to practice millinery techniques and just dink around making hats. One December Wayne helped me make a crazy green charmeuse Christmas tree hat. I had seen something like it on the cover of an old Vogue or Bazaar magazine, and just had to have one. It was a giant cone shape draped with the green charmeuse, had black netting hanging low in the front and red Christmas balls attached in various spots. It was quite a hoot. I wore it Christmas Day to the home of some rather conservative types and they were a bit overwhelmed, I think :) I wish I still had it, or at the least a picture of it.
The picture in my profile, was taken back then (I guess that makes me nearly 20 years older now -- egads, time passes quickly when you are having fun!) by that same friend, Sandy. We had a blast taking all the hats we had made and photographing ourselves in Lincoln Park in West Seattle. She made Renaissance hats of all sorts: Big jester hats, hats for a fine lady or queen, that sort of thing. I was more the modern fashion hat type. The photo in the profile picture is one of the hats I made with Wayne's help. I really didn't have many places to wear it, and it didn't stay on real well anyway, but I have always thought this picture was really fun. I think I finally gave the hat away to a friend's child for her dress-up box.
The only hats I have made recently have been doll hats, and a couple silly hats inspired by a fun friend who is silly and willing enough to wear the one I gave her. That would be Carol Ann Jones of Carol Ann Jones and the Superchargers (http://www.myspace.com/carolajones). She is an awesome singer/songwriter here in Vermont, and if you are ever out this way, definitely catch one of her shows. I don't have a picture of her in the hat I made, but here she is in one of her own:
Something about a well worn hat just makes me smile! Hats off to all you creative people. Keep on cranking it out!
I have been resisting the idea of starting up a blog for as long as there have been blogs. But, my tech-savvy better half (http://haasamps.blogspot.com) challenged me by putting up his blog last night in what seemed like 15 minutes, so today is the day, and here I am. I don't know yet if I'll have anything interesting to say, but I really wanted to put up images of some of the dolls I have been working on in the last couple months, update people on what my dollmaking is all about of late, and just get the word out that I've got dolls up for sale FINALLY on my Etsy site (http://www.cindysowers.etsy.com) thanks to a huge nudge from a friend (thanks, Ivy). I think I'm going to pretty much work from there and here, rather than trying to update my website, which I haven't done in what seems like a year or more.
So, anyway. Here I am. I hope you'll stop by and leave me a note to say hi, and hopefully I'll have some photos of more dolls up in the next week or so. For right now, I really want to put up a doll I really love. I don't have it anymore. It went in a package with a friend's lovely Commissioned Custom Costume Creation (http://edera-faerie.blogspot.com) to a rocker chick you probably know. I don't know her, but I know about her, and decided a doll of her would be really fun to do (it was), and off I spun into dollmaking craziness. I was really happy with the way the doll turned out, especially since I needle sculpted the face (which I have gotten away from of late, preferring to hand-paint the faces I do now), which is often very hit and miss with me. Dolls are never exactly "pretty" with my particular needle sculpting abilities, but they are usually interesting. In any case, pretty or not, I think I captured her essence, which was what I was after anyway. I had heard rumor that she was into the Marie Antoinette look, and I had coincidentally opened a book before I started the doll that had inspired me to make a sort of modern-day rocker chick Marie Antoinette costume. Let me know what you think. And by the way, the rocker chick in question, is, of course, Ms. Courtney Love :) (http://www.myspace.com/courtneylove)
By the way, the doll photos were taken by Vermont's own Ivy Long, whom you can visit at the Edera Jewelry link above. She makes unbelievably gorgeous jewelry in a style you might never have seen before, but should definitely see more of. Well, for instance, one of my favorites: 
She also takes much better photos than I do, has the artful eye gift, and just generally pulls things together more impeccably than me.
John made the little amplifier to go with, which I dearly love, and he painstakingly applied velvet dyed-to match fabric for the front cover. Inside is a little Radio Shack component that plays a prerecorded bit of a song, which he played, recorded and put in there. It turned out really well. Anyway, I am well pleased. I have no idea if the recipient liked the doll. I hope she did. I hope you do, too. :)
