Mother

At the beginning of this year, when we were still in the depths of a grey wet winter, I shared our King Winter I made to stand on our seasonal table.  At the time my children requested I make a Mother Earth to join us for Spring.  A Mother Earth or Mother Goddess has been represented in cultures for thousands of years, as a deity, a protector and a provider amongst others.  She was worshiped to ensure good harvests, for fertility or to ensure protection from natural disasters this is but a small part of what she has represented.  I pondered all these images as I decided what form our Mother Earth would take.  I had used the book The Nature Corner as an inspiration for our King Winter, this book depicted Mother Earth as an old lady, as does the much older book The Story of the Root Children originally published in 1906.  We love this book and read it regularly so I decided that our Mother Earth would be similar.

She is made using the same process as King Winter, a waldorf doll style head mounted onto a base, with pipe cleaners wrapped in wool for the arms.  She has a 'petticoat' under her skirt to give it some fullness, a round piece of material which is gathered up round the base and post and sewn to the blouse.

Her hair is wool, I used the roving yarn that I made a fulled/felted bowl I shared a few weeks ago.  It reminds me of a great aunt I loved to visit as a child, it was a similar colour and she always wore it in a plaited bun, I never saw it down so had no idea how long it was.

She has a cloak...

....and a shawl, knitted in moss/seed stitch with decreases every other row to give a triangular shape.

All the materials I used were in my fabric or wool stash, either leftovers from other projects or old pieces of clothing I keep for repairing and patching, which was very satisfy and somehow in keeping with the character herself.

I am rather pleased with her, she now stands in pride of place on our seasonal table along with the daffodils I made last year, a felt sheep and lamb and some flower fairies we have been making which I will share with you another time.

Joining in with Nicole for the weekly sharing of crafting on her lovely blog, head on over to see what others have been making......