I have been involved in textiles since I was a small child. My father was an upholsterer and many of my after school hours and summer vacations were spent at his shop. I made Indian moccasins out of fake leather and vests from upholstery fabrics, tents for my dolls, and as I grew older he helped me make duffle bags. I moved on to dressmaking and about twenty-five years ago began doing soft sculpture. Some of those pieces could be called dolls - they were often human figures dressed in clothing from second hand stores. Many of them were life sized.
For many years I also made banners - fabric wall hangings - incorporating a variety of fabrics and found objects. But my real love was three-dimensional pieces and so in the summer of 1994 I took a week long class at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in doll making. I studied with a doll-maker, Akira Blount, whose work I have long admired.
I feel as if I have found a medium which is exciting to me and allows me to use a wide variety of fabrics in creating my dolls. Their faces are sculpted from a cotton jersey, and sealed and painted with acrylics. Their limbs are jointed, allowing them to be posed in a variety of ways. I use anything that seems appropriate for hair -- flax, wool roving, and mohair. Collecting old buttons has been a particular interest for some time and I usually use one or more of these buttons in my dolls. I do not make the same doll twice, since they develop their own personality as they are made. I am working on a new design for standing dolls, and for acrobats who will hang from trapeze bars from the ceiling.