I've loved
Dover clip art books forever. All the way back to when you'd have to cut the bits out, tape them on your whatever-you-were-making and then make copies of the pasted-up layout.
These days, their books come with CDs of their images. Awesome! Recently I bought
Old-Time Anatomical Illustrations (which would have come in handy when I made the
bleeding heart handbag) and
Victorian Fashions. They join a handful of other clip art and pattern books already in my stash.
The sad truth is I've only used a couple of images from my clip art books MY WHOLE LIFE. Sad, because I've spent major bucks buying them. I think it's similar to the fact that I've got stickers in my sticker collection* (don't you dare laugh) that are over 15 years old. I don't want to "use them up" and I want to "save them for something special." Exactly what special occasion will demand that I use my precious mini-star hologram stickers is yet to be revealed.
The other night I decided that I really need to *do* something with my burgeoning clip art collection. So, with no plan in mind, I picked out this Victorian lady and traced her onto tear-away stabilizer. Then, a couple nights later, I pulled my favorite pair of cords out of my pile of "old clothes I can't bring myself to throw away even though I can't wear them because they are thrashed beyond decency," I cut a piece from the leg, and pinned the tracing to it. A couple nights after that, I started embroidering her during Letterman.
The purple cordouroy is super-soft, so I might make this into a cover for my special couch pillow, which right now is just a pillow insert, and has been since I bought it ... over a year ago. If not the pillow cover, I might use it in a patchwork-y cover for my sewing machine which I normally cover with one of Andrew's old t-shirts that has bits and pieces cut out of it. I'm full of crafty confessions today, aren't I?
Even though I have no idea what I'm going to do with her, I'm glad I'm finally using something from my books. Maybe next I'll do something from the Japanese Patterns book
mentioned in this post. And I have *big plans* for one of the lung illustrations in the anatomical illustrations book. Oh, you'll see.
* Yes, I have a sticker collection. It's not huge, but I've had one since 3rd grade. That's me in 1980 at nine-years-old to the left. In that class, we would earn points for being good, and the teacher had all sorts of things you could "buy" with your points. I saved up a mazillion-and-three points to buy the super fancy sticker book. It didn't actually come with stickers, it was just a place in which to stick your sticker collection. That's what got me hooked.