Pattern on pattern on texture, overlaid with fragments of vintage remnants, each piece bearing hints of its previous lives. Stitched and buttoned, soft and secretive containers of memories made and still to come.

 

 

Denise Litchfield (aka grrl + dog) is more than just a maker of soft toys. Her pieces exude their own personalities, like small creatures full of fears and hopes, curiosity and sweet mischief. Denise is also the author of popular blog grrl + dog. where she documents many things – stories of her current projects, stories of/from her home and of course, stories of Bruce, her dog.  Her stories are sweet and whimsical, and just a little bit mysterious, much like her softies.

 

 

 

In her other lives in and around Sydney, Denise is an organiser of crafting workshops with many different groups of people, especially those who live at the fringes of society – the intellectually disabled and homeless – encouraging them to investigate their own capabilities at making. She also recently undertook a craft project with the Spinal Unit at the Prince of Wales (2012).

Denise is also the instigator of and participant in many urban art projects, such as ‘Guerillas Knit Vaucluse House’ (2010), in which she and a group of 15 others sat in the historic Sydney building and over three months gradually yarn-bombed their way through many of the house’s artefacts. Another project involved installing discarded computer keys embedded in resin onto various urban surfaces in Newtown (2010). ‘Escape’ buttons become magic buttons for urban use. Don’t you wish you had an “escape button”? I know I would sometimes love one, just for a sweet hour or two of quiet…

 

 

 

 

 

You can find Denise’s softies in her Etsy shop grrlandog, and you can check her recent projects on her website grrlandog.com and blog dneese.blogspot.com.au.