It has been a rough week, but I made it to the weekend and have finished Draconis II and Mercadriel today. I finished beading Draconis middle of the afternoon and made the changes to his pattern. I then finished up Mercadriel’s wings and started taking pictures. I have to make a run to Office Depot to run off more copies of the pattern tomorrow and get another black toner cartridge for the printer. Enough words already! Here are the pictures. If you click on these pictures, several of them are larger format than I normally put on this blog – the better to see the beading!
I’ll post pictures of Mercadriel tomorrow and will let you now when the pattern will be available on Etsy.
The head and tail are beaded and the wings are in progress. The beading is going much slower than I would have liked, especially as I hoped to finish this guy up this weekend. Oh well, that’s a distant memory now. I started at 10am, took two meal breaks and a grocery store break, and am now stopping as I am so tired I figure I will dump my beads again. Luckily, the first time I did it, it was a small container of very large beads and I didn’t lose the whole container.
I spent most of the week in Washington, DC, for work and work I did. We went out for dinner on Tuesday night and then for a walk around the White House. The weather was nice, 55 degrees during the day, in the 40’s at night, so our walk was quite pleasant. The last time (and only other time) I was in DC, I spent a lot of time on the Mall, but didn’t ever make it to the White House. We saw the Eisenhower Building and the Treasury Building and all of the Banks surrounding the Treasury. And Americans wonder why Wall Street has such access to the Dept of the Treasury. All you have to do is walk across the street and you are at B of A.
Today was spent on cleaning and laundry. In between mopping the floor and pulling up landscape timbers from my front flower beds, I started stitching the Dragon’s wings. I finished that off this evening and started beading his head. I made good progress there, just having the eyebrow ridges to complete tomorrow. I need to bead the tail and the wings tomorrow as well.
Speaking of Dragons – head over to Mary Anne’s blog to see how her dragon is coming. She is pattern testing for me and has chosen fabulous fabric. I’m excited to see the progress she has made this week!
I have spent my weekend getting ready for my trip and working on the second Draconis (4th dragon in total). He just looks like a Draconis, although he’s much better than Draconis I. I could have finished him completely this weekend, but I chose instead to take my time and think about how I want to finish him.
This approach was partially motivated by more troubles with the brocade. I finished up the arms yesterday and got the head sewn and turned. Gypsy Pamela had requested that I wire his mantle so she could shape it. Boy was that painful! Especially turning the head with the darned things inside (and not too eager to come out and play). I started stuffing and managed to get the front of the head sort of well stuffed when the brocade starting pulling away from the interfacing under the stress of all of the stuffing. This is a head which has to be tightly stuffed or the sculpting doesn’t look as good. Unfortunately, I had to go with a less than well stuffed head after the fabric proved too fragile. Oh well, I resorted to spot applications of fray check and white glue, which will be disguised with beading when I get back from my trip.
His eyes and nose have been painted and are just awaiting a coat of gloss varnish over them. I got his wing wires shaped and covered this evening and the wings pinned on. He is enough together that you can see he’s going to look fantastic. I think, since I need to bead his head, that I’ll bead his wings. I’m also thinking of beading his fins and his mantle, and of course, I have to cover up the snafus on his tail. Hence the un-hurried approach! I should have him finished by this time next weekend and I think I’m going to ship him to my friend Connie, so I don’t have to worry about carrying him on a plane.
Another unforeseen problem with the brocade – it’s super slippery. When I put Draconis II on a smooth surface, such as my floor, or my bar, his legs start to slide outward, as if he were doing the Chinese splits. I actually took his legs off this morning, restuffed them and restitched them. It helped only a tiny bit. If I put him on a non slippery surface, he’s fine. I also noticed that I couldn’t get his legs and arms stuffed as tightly as I would like either. It’s been quite the learning experience. I’ve used brocade before, but not for a doll of this type. I also didn’t use interfacing on the previous one – but I didn’t have curves like those on this pattern to deal with either. I’ll have to do some experimenting when I have time to play to see which variable I changed caused the difference.
I finished up the arms today and got the head sewn, stuffed and sculpted. Unfortunately, I am going to have to take the legs off and add more stuffing. They are too flimsy to support the body when the head is attached. I’ll post pictures tomorrow!
