About

My first endeavor as a doll maker began when I dressed a
doll for my daughter in the same costume as she was wearing in the Nutcracker
Ballet. She was only seven and was taking her first steps as a ballerina on the
stage of the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara, California. I was fortunate to get
the same material that was used in her costume for the doll. For the next seven
years, I made a doll for each Nutcracker character she danced.

I love making dolls that are brightly colored and embellished. They are
my sculptural medium. I enjoy being able to take a flat fold of material, sew
and manipulate it into a form, then bead, paint, embellish it into the final form I want.

Making dolls enables me to explore a variety of techniques, not all of them are
fabric or fiber related. I use woodworking tools to create any bases I need. I have learned basic jewelry techniques to enable me to make jewelry I need in the size I need it as well as soldering wire for armatures and supports. I have learned to felt, dye my own fabric using a variety of different types of dyes and create my own fabric using a fabric collage method and free motion machine embroidery. I use colored pencils, water color pencils, gel pens, permanent ink pens and acrylics to create each face. A variety of fibers including yarn, llama, alpaca, wool fibers, mohair and trim are used to create the hair style for each doll.

I begin each doll by creating a body of cotton or silk. The bodies are then stuffed and sometimes may be dyed, or painted with acrylic paints. I make the costumes using a variety of fabrics – cottons, silks, satins, brocades and hand dyed. I then embellish each costume by hand sewing lace, ribbons, trims, fiber, and beads. After the body is created and costumed, I finish the head, attach the hair and sew it to the body.

I create dolls from my own patterns and am in the process of developing them for sale. I also sew dolls from the patterns of others in order to learn new techniques and skills.

My husband and I live in a wonderful home above a creek in the forests of Selma, Oregon, with the deer, wild turkeys, Bob the fox (my daughter named him), grey, brown and Douglas squirrels, wildflowers, mushrooms, coyotes and the occasional bear.

My work can be seen at the Southern Oregon Guild's Guild Gallery in Kerby, Oregon; The Illinois Valley Visitors Information Center in Cave Junction, Oregon and at the Chateau Gift Shop at the Oregon Caves National Monument..