By the tail

Ah summer, Hot weather leaves us longing to cool down, so we go in search of water, the ocean, lakes, rivers and swimming pools.

Many creatures love water, even fantastical creatures, take the mermaid for instance.
 
I am currently working on my entry to Doll Street's Mermaid challenge.

Here is a sneak peek at what I have been working on.

Her torso has shaped nipples, which I lightly colored with pencil. When I had set it down to do other things, my 3 year old decided that she should color on the doll as well. I tried hard to erase the blue pencil, and was left with a faint smudge that resembled a bruise on her abdomen. I drew the sailing ship in micron over the smudge, thus my maiden has been tattooed. I think she will need at least one more on her arm to go with it.

For her tail, I wanted to giver her some texture, so I have been gathering up lace, in a scallop to create scales. this has been quite a lot of hand sewing, which is not comfortable to do in high heat when you hands are sweating. I hope that it reads as scales in the end.

This photo shows it not even halfway done, yet several hours of work, each row is 1/4" above the row behind it. I am using two needles, one to gather the lace, in a scallop shaped, which when pulled taught creates scales, the other to stitch down the lace using a back stitch.