Mini Mary Anning

Miss L loves her dinosaurs.  She also loves her dolls.  And she very, very much loves to have her dolls play paleontologist. 

So, bright idea...outfit her dolls as her favorite lady paleontologists!  Sadly, American Girl does not yet have a line of famous historical scientists.   (But get on that, AG, seriously.) The remedy?  My sewing machine! 

Meet Mary Anning:

 



 

To refresh your memory, Mary Anning was a 19th-century woman who lived on the coast of England.  As a girl, she would explore the cliffs with her fossil-collecting father.  She went on to discover the ichthyosaur and become an influential early paleontologist, despite the boy's club of the time. There are many good books about Anning, including the novel Beautiful Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, one of our favorite children's storybooks, Rare Treasure by Don Brown, and an early-reader book Miss L has attacked many times, The Dog That Dug For Dinosaurs by Shirley Raye Redmond.

 

I used the illustrations in Don Brown's book and a famous portrait of Anning as my inspiration for our doll outfit. 

 



The cape pattern was from McCall's M6526, with the overskirt from McCall's 2609.  These were my very first doll garments!  Encouraged by how the cape and overskirt turned out, I turned to the dress itself, another 2609 pattern, modified a little to be more like the simple dress a poor woodworker's daughter would be likely to have, and more like the girl's dress shown in Don Brown's illustrations. 

 

 

OK, WAY harder, all those little curves and gathers.  I'm glad our model Saige here doesn't complain much about seam puckers and fraying.  Good sport, that one. You can't see her books or petticoats here, but we just borrowed some from another AG historical doll outfit (Caroline's winter boots and her underthings).  The bonnet was found cheap on etsy, I added the red ribbon. 

 

 

And the crowning touch, of course, is the little doll-size hammer!  An inexpensive little jeweler's hammer. 

 

This was a challenge but I learned some new sewing skills...and Miss L loves it, so we will probably need more paleontologist and science-lady outfits!  For all my googling, I don't see any to purchase available, so looks like it is on me to fill the void.  Next on the docket are Sue Hendrickson and maybe Marie Curie.  Who else would be on your must-list?

Finished trilobite sampler and free pattern #3

I squeezed in another finish!  My first little three-trilobite sampler.  I need to find a gray slate or stone frame for this.

I am enjoying building my little trilobite library but it's slow going, what with the ADD-like nature of my stitching whims and inspirations.  The first two in this series are Phacops and Anomocaroidea.

This little third one is Asaphida Ogygiocaris.  Cute, huh?

I've stitched this little sampler using HDF silk in colors "Primitive Barn Brown" and "Primitive Barn Bunny" on which are very complementary to the light gray and brown mottling of the 36 ct. Silkweaver linen color "Rock Quarry".  As you can see I took inspiration from real gray and brown trilobite fossils from my own collection. 

In the interest of science education and encouraging our small community of scienc-y stitchers, I have been posting the patterns for these little dudes.  If you would like to share these freebies with others, please do so, but please forward them here and do not copy or sell the patterns. 

To save, right click on the photo above and when it loads, right click again "Save picture as" and save as you like.  Enjoy!

Another free trilobite!

My little landscape quilt is thisclose to being finished, and I am also thisclose to completing the first page of my Metta sampler, but oh there is just so much life to live outside of stitching and I'm not quite ready to post them yet.  I also recieved a couple new books and stash over the weekend but haven't yet taken pictures of them.  BUT I do not come here empty-handed.  The kids are busy "making dinosaur bones"  (again, no pictures yet) so in honor of that here's another trilobite pattern for your enjoyment! 

This here little dude is a Housia species of Anomocaroidea, which is a superfamily of suborder Asaphid trilobites.   They are found near Radium, British Columbia (where I have never been, but hope to go someday) and were usually about 3 centimeters long.  Cutie pies!  As always, please respect copyright laws and do not sell this pattern but please feel free to point other fossil-loving crafters in this direction.  Right click and "save as" to download.

Alright, I gotta go play MarioKart with the rugrats, put them to bed, finish *something* and then get a good night's sleep, so I can get up early tomorrow and drive an hour to sit in a hotel conference room and not fall asleep in a seminar on new standards for vapor intrusion assessment.  Onward!

Free trilobite pattern -- Phacops

I went looking for small cross-stitch patterns of trilobites, especially ones that are accurate to actual species, because I'm thinking I want a sampler of trilobites.  The variation in these little fossilized critters is so endless, it will be interesting to see how they'd work set out like the old quaker or vierlande traditional samplers, with lots of motifs that are very similar in general outline, but very very different in the details.  My google-fu is strong, so I found...

None.  Go figure, I guess the community of nerdy, cross-stitching geologists is a small one indeed.

But, not to be deterred, I decided to make my own trilobite patterns.

For those who might not have been paying attention in school that day, trilobites, early arthropods, ruled the seas millions of years ago and went extinct before the dinosaurs even existed.  They were the single most diverse group of organisms that have lived on this earth and ranged in size from a couple feet to only a few millimeters across.   In the interest of science education and encouraging our small community of scienc-y stitchers, I'll post the patterns up here as well.  If you would like to share these freebies with others, please do so, but please forward them here and do not copy or sell the patterns. 

With all that out of the way, here is numero uno, the famous Phacops!

Right click and select "save target as" to download. 

The Phacops genus of trilobites was common about 400 million years ago and is well-known because of their large compound eyes and rounded shape.  Fun fact:  phacops is latin for "lens-face".  Ha!

Sure, I'll make you a dinosaur cake.

Meet Bloody the dinosaur: 

Now tacked up on darling daughter's wall.  One of many many new dinosaurs she recieved for her 4th birthday on Saturday.  Boy, did she have a great day! Dinosaurs all day long AND going on rides at the fair.   Highlights: