Fairy Costumery

Pretty fairy in her new dress of silken gossamer gathered from the berry patch, dyed with the juices of the lucscious fruit, stitched together with sunbeams and moon-dust, and her apron of sparkly dewdrops.

At a porcelain doll making class many years ago I made the fairy with visions of dressing her in a beautiful butterfly costume.  Her butterfly wings and her apron of glass beads I later made at home, but then life got in the way and she was never finished. As the years went by her head hung lower and lower, she was one unhappy fairy.

Finally I took action, bought some doll elastic and firstly attempted to restring her the original way.  This was a complete failure.  Her joints wouldn’t stay together at all.   After a couple days of pondering I decided to rethink the whole way she was strung.  I’d been reading about neuro-plasticity (a whole other story)… So fairy neurosurgery it was. After carefully picking apart the knots I doubled the elastic back over each joint and threaded all four ends back through her neck and tightly knotted either side of the bead that held her head.  This was much more successful and my little fairy was looking to the world again.

Now she needed a beautiful fairy costume. Strands of silken gossamer stitched with sunbeams and moon-dust to complement her apron of dewdrops would be best.  How to create such a garment? I stitched together strands of a ribbon yarn with golden metallic thread and random tiny glass beads. The effect was what I had hoped for.

The only problem is that now my fairy needs new wings and a new hairdo to complement her beautiful costume, but that is a job for another day.