Making some dolls

I've been making some crafty progress.  I thought I would demonstrate to my IMMENSE audience that I am doing stuff... when JG is napping, at least.

I think getting this far has taken me 6 weeks.  Embroidering the faces takes the longest, mainly because I hesitate about colors and what the face should look like.  Then I do the same thing with the hair, I want it to look right, so it took me a solid week of placing felt, removing, cutting, twisting, and then going with my original idea.

I am a seriously slow creative person, especially when I don't have a due date.  However, my mom is having a mini craft fair at her house in two weeks, so I've got to sew together a whole lot of toys... I wonder how quickly I can do that?  I'll post more about that in a little while.

See how excited I am to have them finished?  Now all I have to do is take weeks to make them underpants and dressess... well, that took me a year with the first one.  So, I guess you'll just have to wait and see how quickly (or, in reality, slowly like frozen molasses) I can get these suckers completed.

Doll Arms, Doll Legs

On the right is the muslin as it originally came out of its tea-bath, and on the left is the arm turned right-side-out. It's three (?) shades lighter turned out, and I first I wasn't sure if I liked it -- but with everything stuffed it really doesn't look that bad.

The torso, arms, and legs all turned out fabulously. It's one of the first times I've designed a pattern and had it turn out the way I wanted it to. The torso shoulders are a bit pointy, but they may work out just fine once I've got the arms attached.


I sewed the knees for "joints." I was going to do it on the sewing machine -- yet that is somehow too complicated for my head to understand... So I sewed them by hand. I know, it takes longer but I had total control of where the stitches went.

I plan on tying the elbows by wrapping a string or something around them to create a joint. I'm not quite sure how it will look. But I didn't want to stitch the joint there too. It just seemed like too much.

The head pattern could use some work. It came out a bit too flat, so the face looks long and thin. It looks fine on the doll, but I'm going to take some time this next week and make a few head patterns, make them, and see what works out better. I think the nose worked out well. I want really big noses on my dolls, it just feels like it gives them more personality. I kind of have a big nose, so I definitely have an affinity to pass that bit on to the stuff I make. That just sounds strange.

Hopefully I'll have this put together by the end of the week. It may take longer since I want to try out different heads... Who knows, you'll just have to check back, yo.