Got myself a crying, talking, sleeping, walking living doll

Introduction to Making Cloth Dolls by Jan Horrox contains fully illustrated step-by-step instructions for making three different cloth dolls. Each doll is also shown in two different colour ways to demonstrate the variety possible from the basic patterns. I made the simplest doll, her face is flat, rather than sculpted and her hands are ‘mittens’ without separate fingers. There is plenty of advice on suitable fabric, thread and stuffing, so I felt well supported even though this was my first doll. I drew my face with fine line permanent pens a white gel pen and some watercolour pencils. I think my dolls features were a little too fine, the ones shown in the book are much more exaggerated. The dolls take only small pieces of fabric so I used some precious scraps for the body and legs. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily the doll went together, her arms and hips are button jointed so that she can sit and wave! The dolls skirt is made of layers of sheer fabric and this was really good fun, building up colours and textures. The best bit had to be adding the hair, which really gave the doll her character, and allowed me to go to town with all the mad novelty yarns in the stash.

I didn’t have any specialist doll making equipment apart from a very long needle and although I have no doubt that some long tweezers would have made life easier I can’t say that anything was much of a struggle with just a usual sewing kit.

I thoroughly enjoyed making this doll, so this is another book with which I will not part! I can see myself using further dolls and making them in all sorts of weird and wonderful characters. I would definitely make the facial features more prominent in future, to balance up all the extravagance elsewhere!

I'll show my efforts next post!

Hope you are all well and having a good weekend. x