Fiona, the Moulin Rouge Dancer!

Presenting... Fiona!

Except for the red velvet gloves that simply were not turning out and were not looking nice, she's pretty much how I imagined!

For the sake of interest, here's a list of the materials that went into her creation:
German mohair
ultrasuede
Flexlimb, 3 rods
wire
thread
floss
paint
German glass eyes
eyelashes
pearls, 2

wig
shoes
fabric for "invisible" under suit
feather head-dress
feather 2-tail boa
beads, small and large, 13 mini strings
Rhinestone earrings
antique head-piece jewelry
tail-piece jewelry
doll stand

All totaling $119.51, and that doesn't include the labour, lots of it! Yicks! She's the priciest piece I've made...

So what is a reasonable adoption fee?

What's up!

It's Friday, the weekend is here and Fiona was born, on January 30th! She did not want to be photographed nude, so you'll have to wait as I create her costume... inspired by these lovelies!

In other news, I enjoyed a wonderful birthday! Cake, presents, cards, dinner, more cake (including a triple chocolate cheesecake that a colleague said "made men redundant"!) I am grateful... and quite stuffed!

PS Kathleen, do you remember giving me this card years ago!? :)

Progress!

What a great day! First off, I started on Fiona's arms, wiring them and then referring to the Moulin Rouge pamphlet concerning her finger nails. Surprisingly, the ladies have relatively short and unpainted nails! Perhaps this is because of the frequent costume changes? So I selected a pale pink for the bear's claws.

And Willow? She's doing great, with the bandages off. You can't beat this view from my chair in the studio!

After lunch, I felt it was the right time to try Fiona's nose and Wow! It's always a surprise for me when a nose turns out nice on the first try! Noses are so tricky... Her's became a very classic shape on her rather pointed snout, very fitting for her character. Then she got her red-lipsticked lips and brown eyes, just like her namesake. While she's not ready for her close-up yet, here are all the body parts, almost ready for assembly! (There are two sets of ears because I'm not sure of the size so I made a smaller pair just in case and painted the inner ears all in one shot.)

Hey! Looks like she's ready to dance!

Fiona!

Yesterday I tried the head again, a bit larger, and this time it worked! Yippy! I then went ahead and cut out the rest of the paper pattern pieces, pinned and cut out all the mohair parts, and did most of the trimming (which is a necessary step for nice, seamless seams especially for the darts).

Today I finished the trimming and vacuumed the whole house, a necessaary step to suck up all that fine, loose mohair! That's about all... now it's off to work for the next 5 days. Knowing myself, I won't plan to accomplish anything on my bear as I usually come home too tired to do anything creative, although I do *HOPE* to do some prep work, needed before the parts are run through the sewing machine.

And what name will this lovely madame take? Fiona! In the Spring 2008 issue of Greater Paris, Fiona Notaras was interviewed about her occupation as a Moulin Rouge dancer. Here's her picture, note the red beads! So I thought it would be neat to name my dancing girl after this talented woman.

(If you are Ms. Notaras and would prefer that I do not use your name, please simply let me know!)

cabin fever

Christmas was lovely, but we always end up with cabin fever after a few days, so shopping around Boxing Day is a given. With my sister's help (she found them), I scored some lovely faux-crystals at the DollarStore, of all places! They look really very nice... And at the Antique Warehouse, we found some perfect costume jewelry that will brilliantly finish my Moulin Rouge Parisienne dancing girl! Yes, this is the first critter on my list, waiting for 2 years, ever since we visited Paris and I saw those gorgeous posters for "Feerie"!