Introducing Miranda

In September last year I went on a face making course with Jan Horrox in Cromer. These are the Heads that resulted. I have now created a body to go with one of the heads. Jan has a new book An Introduction to Cloth Doll Making and I used the first pattern in the book for the rest of the doll. She is called Miranda.

The legs are made from a re-cycled blouse. The body has vermicelli stitched in gold on top of organza and some recycled silk from a waist coat that a friend made. The top of the arms use the same silk, but an area which was previously dyed with silk paints. The first two pictures are work in progress pictures. Her clothes are stitched to her body so I wanted to take photos before she was covered.

Here she is finished.

 

Introducing Shortie

I made the head for Shortie in September 2009, at Jan Horrox's workshop. I finally finished him today. He is from Ute Vasina's pattern. I sewed the hands on the embroidery sewing machine.

Ann K - do you recognise the shirt?

Mavis - the feet wouldn't sew right because I have turned Shortie into a Mermaid with feet, i.e. the front of both legs are sewn together and the back of both legs are sewn together rather than each front sewn to each back. He is just going to have to have an apron.

Edith Flack Ackley

Mum and I have just made a couple of dolls using the embroidery sewing machine. They have to be personalized but were quick to make.

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Doll Fashionista

Sometime in the summer my Mum and I spent a weekend creating a doll from the Doll Fashionista book. http://www.thedollloft.com/. We got as far as putting the body together. I have now only just had time to complete her. She is my fourth. There are some things about her that I like and some things I would do differently next time. I like her hair, using felt, using a mask to position the features. I didn't like painting the felt because it went bobbly and the face is OK but her nose is the width of mine and her face is only about 6 inches across!

Doll Heads

During the first weekend in September I went to Cromer in Norfolk (UK) to do a two day workshop with Jan Horrox. It was all about making heads for dolls. We made the middle two on the first day and the outside two on the second. I was very pleased with the results, I have rather a lot of awful heads in my body box.

The one at the top is actually a flat piece of material but the shading makes it look as if the nose is sticking out.

The one on the right is supposed to be a troll but I sewed top top of the front section to the bottom of the back. I was able to redeem it with some judicious needle scuplting. I just need to make bodies now to finish them off. Making bodies is easy in comparison to heads. You can visit Jan's site at www.janhorrox.com

Having a Bath

I have been a bit remiss in posting to my blog. Work has taken up a lot of time recently although I have had time to the the odd craft project. When I was in South Africa I bought some American books from the 1970s about doll making. One of them had a doll made of stockings and it was taking a bath. I belong to the yahoo group ukfabricfigures and we had a challenge to create a doll doing something, so I decided to make one having a bath. All I had to do for the challenge was take a photo. The doll only has fingers in one hand and the hair was taped on with double sided tape. I think I will keep the photos but chuck the doll!

I did find that stocking was quite good for shaping although some bits worked better than others.

Polly Patches still in progress

At the time of writing Polly Patches has had two heads and is about to get a third.



The problem with this face is that the eyelashes ran. Each time I got home from work her face was blacker and blacker.



This is the back of her head in a pony tail.



And this is face number 2. Too googly eyed and her nose has disappeared into her face.