Fly Away Home

After Mom passed away I just didn’t feel able to create anything new. After a couple of months I knew it was important to get back into the studio but my heart just wasn’t in it. I decided to focus on something that might in some small way be a memorial. I had some fabric from Mom’s stash (she taught me to sew so many years ago), so I wanted to use some of it to create the doll. I decided on some soft blue impressionistic floral fabric that I remembered from my childhood. This would be the base for the doll’s body. The hand dyed yellow silk would be used for accent.

doll in progress

My mother was a painter and some of her favorite subjects were birds. I wanted to find a way to incorporate birds into the piece. So I added tree branches to the doll’s body, and placed birds on the branches. I used the yellow silk for the birds, deepening the colors with color hue dyes.

 

The branches are made of silk fusion

Here she is finished. I’ve titled the piece “Fly Away Home”, a reference to the birds in the branches, but also to my mother, who is home now in Heaven.