All those years ago, I sculpted a mold for a doll head. I made only six doll by it and it has been under my bed in a box ever since. Elaine has offered to make some molded cloth heads from that mold for us to share and I am to paint many of them. Elaine will paint some also as she is a great doll maker.
Here are the heads I am working with.
Dolls 3 and 4 sitting in Elaine's green pitchers as their Gesso coat dries.
Dolls 1 and 2 as I began them
The red haired boy is doll 1.
Dolls 1 and 2 drying in crocks in my kitchen
Some of these new dolls are a long way from done with arms and legs and more, but the personality is there.
Doll 3 below drying in my kitchen.
I am trying to get one of the big cloth dolls put together each week, here is the redhaired boy I kept, The other lives with Elaine. I want to make him some brown cotton velveteen britches, my inexhaustible garage will no doubt have velveteen in the huge shelves of craft storage, some of it has moved with me since before I met Jackie. The little boy's tunic is civil war age bought off Ruby Lane some months ago.
number 5 is a dark eyed little girl with wispy hair.
I also have plans to publish a pattern to offer for a different cloth doll I made some years back.
Old Spoon was made,
signed, and dated in June of 1983. She was
one of more than 75 cloth dolls I made in the early 1980’s. Only three were of this pattern, the rest had faces with a
center seam making a nose. I love Spoon the best, as her features rely on paint
alone for her features. At Thirty
inches tall and firmly stuffed, she is a substantial doll with an interesting three part head..
This doll was sold to
a local friend who wanted an old fashioned rag doll for her grandchildren to
play with. Spoon played enthusiastically
with all the children and has many stories to share now if she could speak to
me. Around 2010, the grandchildren were
all grown and scattered and Spoon came home to me, soiled and disheveled but
undaunted. There is a tire track from someone’s tricycle across her throat and
stains of unknown origin on her stockings and her once sweet antique real
child’s frock was torn and needed replacing.
Her white unders were also unusable.
Rug hooking friend Barb Carroll loved Spoon on sight, and sent her a fine
blue checked dress from Pennsylvania,
made of homespun fabric. The doll enjoys
clothing for small children of long ago and has several frocks but her favorite
is the blue check from her Aunt Barbara.
Spoon has retired now from rough play and gives new meaning to “Hanging
out with friends” as she hangs on a wall in my bedroom among other cloth dolls
and old samplers and sewing rollups. e