I’ve been down with a cold for the past few days. I’ve made friends with the NyQuil bottle.

During my convalescence I revamped Cutemojo with a completely new look, new theme and re-installed the shopping cart that I took offline when I moved last year. I have to build another light box and start taking photos of my inventory now but the shop is otherwise ready for business.

Last night I started painting my Queen Anne doll. It was really difficult to make myself cut the joints and get started on her, because painting is where I will inevitably screw things up. Obviously I know gesso exists and if I really mess things up, it’s here for me to apply over and start again. Worst case scenerio: I have to cut, sew and stuff a new part. I would just rather get things right the first time.

I also know that this is a tendency that hangs me up on a lot of things, since I would much rather not try than risk failure. I’m excellent at not trying. I don’t usually think about it, but being sick tends to punctuate certain habits of mine that I don’t like very much. I cringe when I think of wasting supplies and materials and it takes some mental flexibility for me to see that my making mistakes and redoing bits is not really a waste.

After cutting the joints and setting the loose beads aside, I applied a thin layer of gesso directly to the linen where I planned on painting. Once the gesso dried I used antique white as the base coat.

Next I mixed a little instant coffee into clear sealer, not a smooth blend– only mixing enough to wet the granules without incorporating them into the varnish. If I’d been thinking I would have taken an in progress picture, because as the coffee/sealer is applied with the brush the granules do dissolve leaving sharp grains behind.

Then I followed with crackle finish and the same antique white that I started with. Since it’s a little paler and more uniform than I would like I’m going to do one more very light coat with the coffee/sealer blend, diluting it with a little more sealer to grunge up the finish a little before applying clear varnish and painting her features.

This is my progress so far. I deviated by embiggening the nose, leaving the hair bun off (for now at least, I’m still contemplating hair) and needle sculpting the face. I couldn’t find the right sized wooden beads in my craft stash but I happened to have the right sized glass pearls on hand.

I think the glass pearls work well for the joints. There’s something very compelling about the way they peek out from the muslin.

Tomorrow there will be (in theory at least) gesso and paint and the making of clothes, but tonight I’m just going to revel a little in my progress.

That’s right, relax and revel.

I’m going to assume that breeding conditions are less than ideal in the craft room because it stopped reproducing.

The timing was great though, because I usually don’t think that much about stuffing, and there are tons of people that know far more about what to use and how to use it that were willing to point me in the right direction. And as it turns out there are a lot of stuffings available at Christmas time sold as snow decoration that really aren’t readily available during the rest of the year.

I was also pointed to an awesome video for learning how to properly stuff a doll using hemostats.

The bunnies above were filled with Silky Soft, produced by Fairfield (the very same makers of regular poly-fil) it’s super bouncy and feels baby fine in comparison to the normal stuff. It doesn’t pack tightly, so when I overstuffed a tiny head and left it on the table, I’d return to find white polyester brain matter oozing out the neck hole. I bought this stuff before I had the the sense to ask the experts, but fortunately it’s perfectly appropriate for my squishy little toys.

Then there’s poly-fil, it looks loftier but packs densely. Using the hemostat technique I attempted Mikey from Beautiful Animal Dolls by Miriam Gourley. My Mikey’s skin is just cotton flannel, since JoAnn’s is all I really have for a fabric store there’s no proper wool felt to be had offline, but the thinner skin made a great test for the stuffing and technique. The hemostats really did make all the difference in the world and he’s not nearly as lumpy I feared he would be.

And he stands!

I also picked up a 50/50 rayon (from extruded bamboo) and polyester fiber (Nature-fil by Fairfield) and I guess I’ll be grabbing some of the Eco(-fil? I can’t remember) made from Ingeo (extruded corn) fibers when it goes on sale after Christmas but I have yet to try those out.

I’m not going to argue that messing with forbidden fruit didn’t have a certain appeal. The real appeal though was what all that stuff had potential, not the sort of stuff I would have picked at the Ben Franklin’s in Oregon City, Mom’s stuff was the kind of kitschy craft materials found in the back of old Workbasket magazines. More to the point, it presented a challenge I longed to take on– taking unfamiliar and (to me) exotic materials and making whatever out of them.

Now I get that same sense of challenge and excitement from finding caches of craftiness at garage sales. Except this time around I don’t have the threat of a bread-board or a belt swinging at my posterior to keep my creative instincts at bay. I turn into that little kid that just wants to make stuff again.

This is basically what I started with, some wooden beads and weird little puffy angel wings. I could see me buying the beads (maybe, if I were particularly inspired to do something folksy or a little drunk or both) but the angel wings wouldn’t even be on my radar.

I started by priming the beads with a basic acrylic paint sealer; since runny faces are sad faces.

The rest sort of happened bit by bit.

The doll on the left is my first attempt, she looks slightly more pregnant than her friend. I penned her features on over the primer, which I didn’t like so I switched to paint with the 2nd doll.

At 2.75 inches tall, they are hefty little gals. Whoever said angels can’t be fat? Maybe they are the guardian angels of roast beef and lots of gravy and extra helpings of potatoes. Who am I to judge?

I suppose I have plenty of time to contemplate these questions while working on the rest of their little heavenly host.

All those little heads laying there, if you really think about it– the dowels would be equivalent of spines.

I will consider this to be my Predator homage moment. I suppose working on little calico alien face huggers would be a little overboard, even for me so I’ll keep up with the doll thing for a while.

As I was experiencing a distinct lack of mohair, Theresa at Yarn Over came through for me with a big bag of the stuff.

After spending three days of my life gluing nylon curls on this doll (in an attempt to make-do) and producing what can only be called a ginger-fro, I was only more than happy to take off my prior mess and start over. (I’m such a liar; I wanted to cry a little.)

Mohair can be styled just like human hair. I used a couple of judicious spritzes of water and gave her a quick trim with the edge of a razor. Trimming with scissors would make the cut too blunt. The hair nearest the face is glued on in the opposite direction and then fixed down around the sides of the face to the top of the ears to conceal raw edges of the hair underneath.

Then I did a little happy dance.

I’m not quite finished with this doll, the plan is making some more outfits (a Christmas dress, underwear, a fancy gown) and accessories.

I carefully go over my chalk lines with a running stitch so that I can see the lines from either side of the fabric.

Once marked, I finish by hand using a tiny back stitch. If you want to try to do this part on a sewing machine I highly recommend you take Aunt Maggie’s advice and use a treadle machine so that you have better control over the speed and direction of the stitch. I tacked small snaps (size 0/4) by hand as the back closure.

Here’s a finished dress made from the base pattern. Little changes to the neckline, or the addition of sleeves or even adding a small amount of trim will give your doll a whole new look, so hold onto your pattern; you can use, alter and reuse it to embiggen your doll’s wardrobe.

]]> http://pointysticks.net/2011/08/14/dressing-up-travel-dolls-part-3/feed/ 0 http://pointysticks.net/2011/08/14/dressing-up-travel-dolls-part-2/ http://pointysticks.net/2011/08/14/dressing-up-travel-dolls-part-2/#comments Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:40:24 +0000 Wendy http://pointysticks.net/?p=919 Cleaning up patterns the first time around can be a little intimidating, it really is just a matter of going through the right steps with the right tools.

The muslin pieces are so small and floppy they need to be stiffened up in order to facilitate tracing. Fusible interfacing works, so does buckram and fabric glue; my all time favorite is freezer paper.

Freezer paper is cheap, multipurpose and comes in fairly large quantities. It usually takes me two or three years to use up an entire roll. The heat of the iron will fuse the plasticized (shiny) side to whatever surface its facing, so I always cover my ironing board and use a bit of scrap fabric as a pressing cloth to protect my iron.

Then I trim out the pieces and trace them. Graph paper isn’t a necessity, but it does make life a little easier. Starting with the front piece mark a center line, line up with the center of the pattern piece and trace lightly around. Right away you’ll see that my lines are a little wonky, to correct this I mark the center line on the freezer paper side of the pattern, line it up again and trace lightly right over the first tracing.

With pencil I mark with dark lines where the two tracings agree. If I only use only the outside lines the piece will be too loose, and inside lines will make it too snug. I have go somewhere in the middle so I break out a french curve and go somewhere in the middle. Then I give the sides the same treatment, only instead of flipping the muslin over, I’ll flip and swap the left over for the right for both tracings. This is where I can also safely play the neck line and add a mild curve to the bottom of the bodice.

I also added 3/8ths of an inch to each back seam. If you’re keeping track, only the shoulder seams and the very back seam have anything resembling a seam allowance so far.

I like to keep my original in pencil in case I need to make further corrections. I trace, scan or copy (depending on size and my relative cheapness for the day) a mock up onto paper and tape them together. Then I put the test piece on my model and make sure it fits like I think it should.

At this scale, I allow myself to be fussy. On small pieces even the smallest of mistakes will show up as glaring faults. Since my model is a doll she’s not going to mind a series of test fits. My paper pattern went right together without needing corrections. I’m feeling ambivalent about this success because I thought it would be cool to show how to make corrections at this point. (If you need to make corrections, draw right on the taped up pattern, then transfer those marks to your original, copy and try again.)

I traced all three pieces on the same plane, so that I could transfer the whole pattern to cloth with a minimum of waste. It doesn’t have to be done this way, it’s just my personal preference.

I’m using dressmakers transfer paper to mark up my cloth, but instead of a transfer wheel I use a ball point stylus to trace.

Once traced, I use pins to line up the corners and secure into place.

Some travel dolls will have staples holding their clothes onto their bodies, those tend to be the ones actually dressed by the manufacturer.

Others (like the one pictured) are more often found in handmade outfits, the pink skirt of the dress is made from ribbons carefully stitched together, the rest of the dress is tiny bits of ribbon and lace fitted together with hand stitching and the main material of the chicken leg bloomers is a single piece of skirt belting under all that lace. These dolls were often sold naked in sewing departments so it’s not all that unusual to find them sewn, tied, glued or even crocheted into their outfits.

I try to be as careful as possible when removing the old clothes especially when they are handmade as I always seem to learn something about the construction as I’m deconstructing.

Once the doll is bare I cut the rubber band and remove the head and to make cleaning easier.  Old glue, oils, dust and dirt will yellow any new clothes, so it’s a good idea to gently wash the arms and body after dehairing the head.

To remove the hair I use warm water. Warm, not hot– and no soap. The paint on most of these beauties is pretty durable, but there’s no reason to risk it. Their eyelashes (if they have any) are a different matter so I’ll remove those by careful prying before starting the washing and then wash them separately and carefully glue them back on when I’m done with the rest of the head. The one I’m working with doesn’t have lashes so I get to skip that step. I start with lukewarm water and work at the edges of the glue with my fingers, gradually increasing the warm tap (or decreasing the cold) until the glue rolls up and off of of the plastic cleanly. Once the hair and glue is completely removed you can stop the clean up there, but I like to use a very diluted solution of mild dishsoap and a scrap of t-shirt to wash all the parts, and then rinse clean in lukewarm water.

Once the doll is dry and restrung I think the impulse is to immediately go to work on her hair and then worry about costume. I do the opposite and start patterning costumes first since I’ve ruined a lot of nice hairstyles while fitting and dressing. Hair will have to wait anyway as my little box o’ mohair suffered the ravages of a vicious moth attack in storage and I haven’t bothered replacing it yet.

Despite any impressions given to you by home economics teachers that didn’t know any better; making a muslin pattern for anything off of a model (doll or human) is super easy. Since these dolls aren’t too busty there’s no need to be complex: front and back will do. I cut a piece of muslin just large enough to fit all the way around the doll plus about an inch and a quarter to allow for a proper fitting. For the arm holes I cut slits that look about right to fit from armpit to shoulder, plus an extra 1/8th inch at the top for the shoulder seams. Under the slits I dotted marks to represent the side seams. I used tiny tailor tack stitches along the back to get a good temporary closure and marked the lines for the arms and neck. If I wanted to dress her in a western shirt-dress I’d put the closing seam in the front. From there its just a matter of basting the sides inwards to fit my model, snipping the tacks, and cutting away the excess cloth.

Now I have a tiny pattern with no seam allowance. The reason for this is that once I trace out and correct those lines, I’ll probably trace the new pattern directly onto the cloth I select and stitch the pieces together before trimming the seams. 

It may sound counter intuitive to sew first and cut later, but at this scale it will keep the needle from pushing the raw edges down into the needle plate and fraying the heck out of the fabric (and my nerves.) By no means though is my way the only way, I could stabilize the crap out of fabric with starch or iron on interfacing or even slip a couple pieces of wax paper, vellum or wrapping tissue around the seams and tear away the paper when I’m done sewing. I just like my way, but if you’re going to give it a go– try a few different ways and figure out which technique makes you feel the most confident and gives the best results. That’s still a few steps away though.

Lucky kitty with fish

This little guy started life as a pair of knit gloves.

Usually I find stretch gloves perfectly useless as gloves but I haven’t made a softie in a long time and the idea of a maneki neko was way too tempting to resist.

The paw holding the fish is the thumb of the glove, and the waving paw is the ring finger. I cut the head from the palm portion of the other glove. The tips of the amputated fingers are what I used for the nose and feet. There’s no tail because this is a Japanese cat.

The fish is just quilting cotton. Its just this side of 2 inches long, and the tail was a pain to turn. The fish eyes are just French knots.

I had to play with the position of the nose for quite a while, which probably took me longer to get right than actually sewing anything. It kept looking as if I was going to end up with a waving fish holding polar bear with cat ears.

I have a serious phobia of waving fish holding polar bears, so I’m very relieved that my cat finally took a proper kitty shape.

It’s okay. The Gods of Craftopia demand sacrifices, right?

At least I’m left handed.

Somehow I went from an end result hobbyist to a process driven driven one, which I think has improved not only my temperament but has greatly increased my ability to handle frustration. I’m not sure exactly when this transformation happened, but I’m glad it did.

Also improving my outlook on life is that we now have signed off on the house and the move is scheduled for the end of October. This is a huge relief as the idea of renovating this house has literally caused me to have nightmares. I’m serious, I dreamed that the floor in the bathroom collapsed and I couldn’t fix it because I was afraid of being electrocuted by ungrounded wires coming out of the toilet waving at me, and there were all these wingless flies. Okay, I’ll admit that does sound more funny than scary, but it was my dream and a pithy description can’t communicate the horrors that my brain can produce to amuse itself.

Oh, and I have a profound phobia of dangerous things coming out of toilets. I’m not talking about the normal horrors of things coming out of the toilet when it backs up. I’m talking about horrible things coming out of the toilet; things like large scaly hands tipped with razor sharp claws,  small man eating sewer demons, and plague bearing crazed aquatic wharf rats. Now I can add live malicious intelligent groping electrical wires.

In my mind these things are far more likely to come out of toilets when it’s late at night. Usually just after dreaming that horrible toilet terrors will happen, this makes my coffee habit seem like a very bad idea sometimes.

I love it when things work out perfectly– while cleaning out my little corner of the shop to make more room for doll carving I found this old box that once contained turning tools.

It turned out to be just right for holding my new gouges, carving knife, exact-o handles, extra blades, gauge, strop block and compound.

I love it when stash solutions present themselves  before I even know I need them. It looks so well thought out.

my drying solution-- a wire basket and bamboo skewers

What I haven’t thought out well was a way to deal with hanging pieces as the lacquer dries. The solution I came up with is workable, but not exactly satisfactory.

I bought this wire basket at the dollar store a few years ago, since my former desk top basket (a wicker nest number) was appropriated by one of my offspring to hold plastic groceries. My plan was to offer an exchange which makes sense to the adult mind; a little grocery basket to hold little plastic groceries. As you can see, negotiations for the safe return of my original basket failed and I resorted to keeping the little grocery basket.

Up until this morning, this basket held an assortment of junkmail and the small balls of yarn left over from knitting projects. I added a few bamboo skewers and voila! Drying rack.