Wednesday, April 02, 2014

The Story Behind Our Celia - Art Doll


Early last year my sister-in-law's beloved mother, Celia passed away. Celia was a wonderful, extremely optimistic, loving, and beautiful soul who had a wicked sense of humor and love of life. I would describe her as pure joy and just loved her. When Celia was around the room was filled with gaiety and laughter.

Over the past ten years I have written about Celia and two dolls I made for her. The first doll I wrote about on August 24, 2005 in a Linda's Blog post entitled Celia's Doll. The 2nd doll I wrote about on May 18, 2006 in a Linda's Blog post entitled The Story Behind My "Celia's Wedding Dress" Doll. You may also recall that I have written about Celia's husband, Elmer as a doll he had given me inspired my Elmer's Little Boy doll.  His post is here.

Celia was a member of the Red Hat Society and loved dressing up for their different events so when my sister-in-law asked me to make a doll for her using some of the Red Hat Society hats, gloves, jewelry, pocketbooks, etc. that she and her mother had made or used for her various outfits I was happy to oblige.


I decided that my "Celia's Art Doll" would be a fully wired cloth art doll with an embroidered face and would be seated on a chair.


The hat in the picture above was completely covered with purple tulle with a large strip of purple boa around the hat band.  I wanted to utilize both so I decided to make my doll's dress out of purple print with it's sleeves and skirt covered with the purple tulle as an overlay.  I would use the purple boa as a shawl.


My "Celia's Art Doll" is a 19" art doll with a cloth body, embroidered face with wire glasses, fully wired and bendable cloth body, and white curly hair. She is wearing red print bloomers gathered at the waist and ankles. Her black felt boots are criss-crossed with DMC embroidery floss for laces.

Her purple print dress is gathered at the waist, shoulders, wrists and neck and has the purple tulle as overlay on the skirt and sleeves. Lace trim adorns the neck and runs down the center of her dress bodice. Purple hearts created from Celia's earrings add adornment to her lace bodice. Wide red ribbon is wrapped around her waist and tied in a large bow tied in the front. A strip of the purple feather boa's from Celia's red hat shown in the picture above is added as a shawl around the doll's shoulders.

The thumbs from Celia's light lilac gloves serve as gloves for the dolls hands and one of Celia's rings is used for a bracelet on the doll's right wrist. The doll's miniature pocketbook is made from the red velvet print pocketbook shown in the picture above and the pearl strap handle is from a pearl necklace Celia used for one of her costumes.

Celia also had a red hat pincushion with embellishments that I used to create the doll's red hat.

With the fully bendable body my "Celia's Art Doll" sits beautifully on her pink metal chair.

My sister-in-law loved her doll.  She now resides in a glass dome next to a picture of Celia.

For Celia

Memories are like leaves of gold
They never tarnish or grow old
Locked in our hearts
You will always be
Loved and remembered
For all eternity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

May the winds of love blow softly
And whisper for you to hear
That we'll always love and miss you
And wish that you were here

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They say there is a reason
They say that time will heal
But neither time nor reason
Will change the way we feel
For no-one knows the heartache
That lies behind our smiles
No-one knows how many times
We have broken down and cried
We want to tell you something
So there won't be any doubt
You're so wonderful to think of
But so hard to be without

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