Cat and Mouse Game - Christine Shively
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Cat and Mouse Game

21" tall 6" wide. Cotton fabric body, wool stuffing. Trapunto technique in the face to lift the nose. Features created with acyrlic paint, pigma pen, Prisma color pencils. Lips, eyebrows, lids, flair of nostrils and fingernails hand stitched with Gutterman’s and Sulky thread. Highlight and shadow create depth. Hair is two colors of fine mohair yarn, sewn and twisted and into a sculptural forms. Skirt is a circular cut work backed with the texture of a natural cheesecloth. A variety of wool felt cats jump through the circles in the skirt. One cat plays with bauble dangling from the wired fingers. Another chases a mouse. Tall wool felt hat with mice play in a fantasy garden composition.

Between the Idea and the Reality - Christine Shively
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Between the Idea and the Reality

18" tall 6"wide. Cotton fabric body, wool stuffing. Trapunto technique in the face to lift the nose. Features created with acyrlic paint, pigma pen, Prisma color pencils. Lips, eyebrows, lids, flair of nostrils and fingernails hand stitched with Gutterman’s and Sulky thread. Wired fingers. Highlight and shadow create depth. Skirt is a circular cut work backed with the texture of a natural cheesecloth. Wool felt blossoms and leaves created with floral wire, frame the face. Hair is two colors of fine mohair yarn, sewn and twisted and into a sculptural forms.

Bee in her Bonnet - Christine Shively
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Bee in her Bonnet

21" tall 6" wide. Cotton fabric body, wool stuffing. Trapunto technique in the face to lift the nose. Features created with acyrlic paint, pigma pen, Prisma color pencils. Lips, eyebrows, lids, flair of nostrils and fingernails hand stitched with Gutterman’s and Sulky thread. Highlight and shadow create depth. Hair is two colors of fine mohair yarn, sewn and twisted and into a sculptural forms. Skirt is a circular cut work backed with the texture of a natural cheesecloth. Velvet bees and blossoms encircle the skirt. The tall cone shaped hat has a checkerboard border, white flowers, honeycomb and bee hive. Cone like hat is inspired by the beaded ceremonial hats of the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

A Stitch in Time - Christine Shively
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A Stitch in Time

17" tall 7" wide. Cotton fabric body, wool stuffing. Trapunto technique in the face to lift the nose. Features created with acyrlic paint, pigma pen, Prisma color pencils. Lips, eyebrows, lids, flair of nostrils and fingernails hand stitched with Gutterman’s and Sulky thread. Highlight and shadow create depth. Skirt is a circular cut work backed with the texture of a natural cheesecloth. Wool felt mice on spools of thread, sewing items and clock gears weave in and out of the circles.

Birds of a Feather - Christine Shively
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Birds of a Feather

18" tall, 6" wide. Cotton fabric body, wool stuffing. Trapunto technique in the face to lift the nose. Features created with acyrlic paint, pigma pen, Prisma color pencils. Lips, eyebrows, lids, flair of nostrils and fingernails hand stitched with Gutterman’s and Sulky thread. Highlight and shadow create depth. Skirt is a circular cut work backed with the texture of a natural cheesecloth. Wool felt black birds, and small flower buds and leaves weave in and out of the circles. Each of the black birds in the skirt have something different in its beak. The characteristics of magpies, ravens and crows are that they make the best from what they find.

Between the Idea and the Reality (detail) - Christine Shively
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Between the Idea and the Reality (detail)

Trapunto technique in the face to lift the nose. Features created with acyrlic paint, pigma pen, Prisma color pencils. Lips, eyebrows, lids, flair of nostrils and fingernails hand stitched with Gutterman’s and Sulky thread.

My doll art took root in my joy of finding a penny in the lining of a pocket. First impression not worth much but with imagination, innovation, experimentation I would apply my life experiences to create my fabric figures. Turning the mundane into the marvelous has been a driving force in my life. I create opportunity in unlikely places. The long doll art journey I have been on is a kind of three dimensional diary. The pages are crammed with the things that have sparked my imagination. The dolls are a result of a lifetime love affair with fabric, drawing and painting hand sewing and thread, portraiture, ethnic and historic costume and the desire to tell a story using the doll as the vehicle. For someone who barely passed my 7th grade sewing class the irony is not lost on me that I crafted a life that involved sewing. The non traditional approach in my creative process came from a strong art education background that instilled the concept to pay attention to the world around me…. experiment… fail… learn… fail again, persist and what would happen if?

Experimentation, improvisation and discovery allow for the incorporation of the historic and cross cultural reference points, fashion, textiles and embellishment that has been my lifelong inspiration. The combination of observation with fantasy and imagination fuse the familiar with the foreign to create something new with a sense of inclusiveness. Since experimentation is a guiding force it is not an accident that the fabric figures I create use the tenets of improvisation. Yes…And…Agree and Add. Heighten and Explore.