If I could ever catch up enough so that I could do these posts in order,

you would surely discover how one project actually leads to another…

viewing one blog can inspire a plunge into another craft ..

which then leads to something else..

In other words, there is literally a thread that ties all of this together…if you have the patience to stick with me as I try to explain.
…explain the process that I go through, as an author/illustrator/storyteller/crafter.

Maybe you'll pick up on that thread, as I post more of these adventures.

And just so you know, all this occurs in between books…

in between productive writing/illustrating….(most of the time…)

Stretches of creative crafting..

working with my hands.. produces endorphins (happy joyful stuff)

so that when it's time to open the gate, allowing the story to flow onto paper,

it flows smoothly and easily.

Friends often ask, "How do you have time for all of that?"

…and I get to respond, "This is my "J. O. B."

This is what I do.

Okay…so here's an example of how it happens…

I come across a blog, maybe one that is mentioned in someone else's blog that I normally follow…

can't remember exactly how I came across Jessie Chorley, but I did, and she is incredible..and British...and adorable… (check her out:)

So I decided to try to stitch something like she stitches…

Nope, that's not how it went…hold on, I'm thinking here…back up just a bit.
Before I found Jessie Chorley…I found Alicia Paulson

SHE is FABULOUS! And a bunch of us were smitten with her darling darling felt Christmas ornament kits.

Oh, wait…I forgot to mention that before I found Alicia, I found Natalie Jo….

See what I'm talking about? One thing leads to another. Natalie Jo has the most adorable pin cushions with little wooden dollies. AH-DORable!
And I had made one of her dolly kits into a doll for Sophia's 3rd birthday.

But before I had painted that dolly….she had mentioned something about Woodettes, ( wooden storybook character kits from the 30's or 40's maybe? ) and I had found an old set on ebay. I had so much fun re-painting those old broken water-colored woodettes….

And it was Natalie Jo who had introduced me to Wendt & Kuhn figurines (I guess I had seen them before, but she called my attention to them, along with this sweet sweet book…the author of which, wrote Hitty! That's how I came to find Hitty…through Natalie Jo's wonderful blog!
These little figurines were inspiration for the color palette I would use on the woodettes.

THEN I found out about Alicia…through a great bunch of girlfriends…

I had made a few of the felt ornaments and loved them so much, I had to move on to the adorable Miss Maggie Rabbit, also made from that wonderful felt,

and decided to make one for Sophia for Christmas. (in the photo below, you will see the ornaments in the background and Maggie sitting next to a modified pattern of herself..my attempt at making a little sister rabbit per Phia's request)

Do you see that pretty little square of fabric with blue roses…you'll see it pop up later…

…and did you notice little sister's ears…the tiny pink roses fabric? Yes…that would be used later, in the making of sweet Hitty Rachel Rose's dress.

Okay…so here's the Jessie Chorley inspired little piece… (I had loved the refresher course in stitches from doing the Alicia Paulson ornaments and Rabbits…blanket stitch, french knots, etc…..)

(That little heart filled with french knots…would turn up later on Sophia's quilt I just completed.)

So I decided to Christie-fy the stitching…make it my own…for there was already a Jessie Chorley:)

Note the blue roses…Liberty of London fabric. It's a bit pricey, girlies, so save every little scrap. Use it for sweet things like this:) …and this little patch would eventually wind up on a knitted shawl I'm working on.

And the other felt piece, pictured at the beginning of the post wound up on my green crocheted bag…

Yep…same Liberty of London fabric as Miss Maggie Rabbit's ears. Precious scraps.

I went digging for more pretty threads, etc. and came across some old cross-stitch patterns from child-bearing, nursery-preparing days…and a pattern..

…for the Holly Hobbie doll I made in 1974, when I was 12 - 13 years old.

I pulled out the fragile instructions and pattern pieces to discover lavender oxford cloth still pinned to the bloomers' pattern pieces…with those old pins from my Mommy's sewing notions...

That fabric was 40 years old…that is just crazy…isn't it? Has it been 40 years since I was 12?

I have no idea what ever happened to my Holly doll, but I decided (last February…before I had a Hitty to make) that I was going to make another, more improved, Holly Hobbie, and I was so excited! I had a vintage eyelet table runner, gifted to me by an antique dealer, and as it was a bit damaged on one end, thought it would be perfect for a pretty pinafore….

Then…a gift from Mommy. Her cardboard storage box filled to the brim with plastic thread organizers.

It was truly the MotherLoad of DMC embroidery floss…every shade possible..

….maybe she was thinking I was still on the "stitching" thing. How could she keep up? I hop from one thing to the next, ever so fast.

Pinafore …completed…darling… (my red tomato pin cushion from 9th grade home economics class with vintage pins holding down the green felt)

But it was just so ….soooo…blank…empty… like a white canvas..or watercolor paper that needed to be "drawn/painted/colored on… "Christie-fied" (I think you'll soon find that word in the dictionary…for it really IS a thing… to Christie-fy…it was Christie-fied…it will be Christie-fied:)

Yep…it was to be Christie-fied…

Little flowers crept across the hemline… a green vine became a basket. It couldn't help it…that was just what it had decided to be…

Little purple flowers wound through its handles…and little buttercups… for after all ..it was February, when little buttercups begin to pop up and stretch their little heads towards the first rays of sunshine after a gloomy winter...

Oh, my stars… I had forgotten about Holly! I suppose I must get her body made. A very soft old cotton pillowcase will do…

If you don't know me well…I'm quite the little hermit in the wintertime. Ask dear husband… Not much he can do to pry me away from the coziness of the fire all a'glow in our living room's fireplace. So I forage …Ellie's favorite word…through baskets and boxes and cupboards and closets. You won't find me venturing off to a craft/sewing store;)

Didn't you always love that Raggedy Ann had a red heart that read "I Love You".

I thought Holly might need a sweet heart… a Christie-fied heart…(ohhhh! that's used as an adjective, not just a verb!!)

…and a pretty grass-like blanket stitch around a sweet little pocket. (another Christie-fication….could it be I've now used it as a noun?)

Well, there was a movement amongst the girlfriends. We were all coming across old editions of Anne of Green Gables. We were watching our videos of the heart-warming story of Anne (with an "e") Shirley. We couldn't get enough…to the point of looking up the Lady of Shalot in my very old edition

of Tennyson's Poems…(and we had met darling Denise of Ingleside..who lives on Prince Edward Island…who became our go-to for Anne Shirley and Lucy Maud Montgomery facts:)

If you're familiar with the video…in the opening scene, Anne is reading this poem as she is walking through the woods…

I continued to stitch….on Holly Hobbie's pinafore…

…random, nondescript sweet flowers…

Until ….

I had an epiphany…

a light bulb over my head turned bright…

What about Birch trees on the pinafore…

You know the ones….the ones at Green Gables...

And…what if I wrote/stitched some of my favorite quotes across the eyelet… (these things come to me in the night, and I can hardly wait till morning to bring them to reality)

This is one of my favorites…"Listen to the trees talking in their sleep…"

They were Poplar Trees…we had to have Poplar Trees!

Debs O'Brien, one of the dearest gals in all of Wales, is such a clever thing…she noted that the eyelet petals/holes resembled the leaves…or visa versa…

Well, I had been too close to the needlework to notice… but it was true!

My goodness, I couldn't leave out the beautiful cherry tree by Anne's window, now could I…

So little cherry blossoms began to bloom …it was like painting a scene…the needle followed the imagery in the pages of that book…and I tried hard to keep up with the needle.

Dearest Karen Peterson spied a squirrel hole…"Christie, it's a squirrel hole in the tree!"

(This was becoming quite a project! I was surrounded by a creative team…and we were having the grandest time!)