Story of a Doll – Part 4

So after another couple of hours work stitching and stuffing over each of the last three evenings I have something resembling a doll.   she is now ready to be dressed. I haven’t decided whether to add sleeves to the full arm which is why the arms aren’t attached yet.  I also find they get in the way when I am trying to stitch a skirt around the waist.

The stuffing is always the bit that takes longer than I think.  I tend to do it whilst I’m watching TV although I don’t really watch because I have to pay attention to what I am doing.  Two things with stuffing: firstly I can never believe how much stuffing I can get into a small pocket of fabric and secondly it takes loads of smoothing and shifting and checking and squeezing to get the piece smooth,the right shape and symmetrical.

The arms and legs are jointed using strong thread and buttons.  On my first few dolls I used unobtrusive buttons and I may do this again depending on the type of doll.  On the latest ones,though, I decided to make the buttons a feature.  This one has flower shaped buttons.  The legs will be covered with a skirt but the buttons on the arms will be on show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway the weekend is nearly upon us and I have some free time to dress Aurora in her pink – very pink – outfit, and of course, give her some hair!

No more up dates now until she’s finished.  it’s only fair that my friend who has ordered the doll gets to see it first.

In the mean time, if you are inspired to have a go yourself, the full details are in this book.  It’s easy to follow and there are full size pattern pieces which you can trace off and use.  Instructions include how to make the body pieces and attach them together, draw the face, make the hair and dress the dolls.  I can’t recommend it enough if you are starting out.

 

Belinda

So here is Belinda.

Belinda - cloth doll by raggleberry

Belinda - cloth doll by raggleberry

Belinda - cloth doll by raggleberry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is my second attempt and was made for my granddaughter.

This is still more or less an exact copy from Jan Horrox’s book.  I can’t strees enough how valuble this book has been to me.  It gave me the inspiration to begin making dolls and the clear instructions have been my starting point for the adaptations to the dolls I am now making.

By now I had spent too much money buying fabrics, thread, pens, needles ( I didn’t know there were such things as doll needles!), wool: the list is endless.

Hopefully you can see that my second attempt is an improvement on the first and this leads me to a bit of advice for anyone starting out.  Always take a photo of any piece of craft work you make or better still keep hold of the first attempt however bad you might think it is.  On days when the knitting, sewing, cutting, pasting, stuffing etc isn’t going to plan you can look back and remind yourself how far you have come.

Anastasia

I got into this cloth doll making thing by accident really.  For reasons that I can’t now remember, a few months ago, I decided I wanted to make rag dolls.

Now my idea of a rag doll was something like this by The Dollie Mixtures.

Rag Doll by The Dollie Mixtures

So off I went to trawl Amazon to find a book to get me started.  I found several books about traditional rag dolls but also saw Jan Horrox’s book – Introduction to Making Cloth Dolls.

Introduction to Making Cloth Dolls

The dolls in this book weren’t like any others I had seen and I thought they were amazing.

I bought the book and following Jan’s instructions to the letter made my first doll – Anastasia- from fabrics I already had lying around.  She’s a bit pale because I only had ivory cotton and her face isn’t very distinct as I had no decent pens but I’d proved to myself that I could make a decent stab at it.

Anastasia by raggleberry