MY PROFILE
Yes, I am quite a bit older than this childhood photo of myself! I am fortunate to live in a quaint Christian community, El Dorado Springs, Missouri with my husband our two little Yorkshire Terriers and three cats. Our town still has a community orchestra that plays through the summer months in the spring-fed El Dorado Springs city park! Picturesque and it makes me feel like I have stepped back into more lovely times. My home is a 2-story traditional brick home nestled in 5 acres of oak trees. On the top floor are my Victorian attired studio and my office. Very conducive for this designer, cloth doll maker, freelance writer, manufacturer of doll patterns and supplier! I am the mother of 3 daughters, and the grandmother of 11 grandchildren - 7 granddaughters and 4 grandsons. I am happy to say that I still have my mother and father, and I have one brother living. I lost my sister to a car accident several years ago. I began designing and making dolls for exhibits at various International Quiltfests. It was for these fests that I designed doll patterns, acquired distributors and had my work selected for trade magazines and pattern catalogs. It was also at these shows where my work was used in instructional classes, and where I was commissioned to design dolls for various companies.
In the last 19 years I have created my one-of-a-kind collector dolls, as well as written and illustrated books of faces for cloth dolls. I have had my dolls on 5 magazine covers, written, and had published, profiles and articles about other doll artists and events. For 2 years I had a column in a national magazine geared toward giving helpful dollmaking hints to cloth dollmakers. In these 19 years, I have had my dolls, doll patterns, and articles published in: Doll Crafter, Doll Costuming, DOLLS, Doll World, Contemporary Doll Collector, Doll Reader, Doll Life, Doll Designs, Dollmaking Crafts & Designs, Victorian Sampler, Crafts 'N Things, Creative Product News, Craft & Needlework, The 1996 Doll Source book, Anatomy of a Doll, Soft Dolls & Animals, Dollmakers Journal, Crafters Circle, Doll Hair Basics, Doll Castle News, Sunbonnet Crafts, Profitable Craft Merchandising' Patterncrafts, Honey-Hill, Clotilde, Herrschners, Diamond Dollies News, Friends of Hitty and the Washington Post Weekend Magazine. I recently had my latest pattern for a cloth Hitty doll in Soft Dolls & Animals. On line, I have had articles about my business in Virtual DOLLS, Business Owners' Idea Cafe and Themestreams' In Search of Excellence. I have had one-of-a-kind artist-original dolls travel in the 1992-93 "Dollmakers' Magic V" exhibit, and another travel with the 1996-97 "In Celebration of the Doll: The Figure in Cloth IV." I had one-of-a-kind gypsy dolls exhibited in the original (1990) and second (1993) "Gypsy Challenge," as well as in the (1993) "Dollmaker's Magic Seminar" and the (1993) "NCDMA Festival." My dolls have been exhibited in museums, galleries, the San Diego Quilt Show, The Soft Nation: Contemporary Approaches to the Doll, the 1996 Doll Makers' Challenge at Silver Doll City (where I sold my dolls and demonstrated doll making for 10 days), the 7th (1997) Annual Dimensions in Dollmaking, the Fifth Anniversary (1999) Santa Fe Doll Art Symposium and had dolls traveling with representatives. My dolls have been displayed at the International Quilt Markets in Houston, Texas, Denver, Colorado and Kansas City, Missouri. The dolls that I designed for Fairfield Processing Corporation appeared in one of their full-page national ads. Those dolls also traveled with Fairfield to all of the trade shows which they attended for one year. A selection of my dolls also traveled with Donna Gallagher Creative Needlearts, Inc and appeared in the company's books and advertising. My collector lady dolls have been on "Home and Garden" and CBS television programs; my little collector Hitty dolls were a part of the 1999 Telly Award winning documentary "Hitty, an American Travel Doll." One of My Hitty dolls - Christmas Hitty - was featured in the Christmas issue of DOLLS, 2004. I have a large selection of doll patterns to my credit sold under my pattern company, The Enchanted Attic. I have been a member of the National Cloth Doll Makers Association (NCDMA), Academy of American Doll Artists (AADA), Dollabilities (doll club in Reeds Spring, Missouri), elinor peace bailey's, "The Association of People Who Play With Dolls (APWPWD) and Virginia Heyerdahl's "Friends of Hitty". On-line, I am a member of Friends of Cloth Dolls (FOCD), Doll & Fiber Arts, Doll Street Dreamers, the Cloth Doll Connection, Vintage Cloth Dollmaking, Artist Dolls, Christian Dollmakers, Hitty and Friends, Hitty Girls, FiberArts, Not Just Dolls (NJD) and many more. I also have my own Yahoo Group, Blog and a PictureTrail site. For a couple of years I have been turning down offers to show new patterns in various doll magazines because of not having enough time to make new patterns. I hope to change this some day in the near future! Most recently, three of my black
Victorian Lady dolls were featured in the Winter, 2007, issue of Art Doll Quarterly. Also, one of my Christmas Hittys was in theHoliday Issue, 2007, of DOLLS Magazine.
I love creating, selling, managing my own website and most of all communicating with my customers and fellow dollmakers. I answer all correspondence sent to me! I love what I do. I am blessed!
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