6/14/04: A New Venture

Well, my mother is quite the fabric artist and is rather well known among other fabric artists. She is putting together a gallery show of dolls on a "Celestial dreams" theme and asked if I'd be interested in making something for it. I've made a few doll costumes but I've never made the doll itself so this should be an interesting adventure. 

When she told me the theme I immediately thought of The Queen of the Night character from the Magic Flute by Mozart. It is a role I have sung and have costumed in an opera that follows me wherever I go. I must admit, I don't like this opera very much even if it has some good bits in it, but I can't escape it no matter how hard I try. LOL

Scanning Google, I've found a few images to get me started...

Some thoughts so far, I thought the doll either standing on or reclining on a crescent moon would be nice. Standing might be too much like Madonna statues, and seeing as how the Queen is the bad guy, she has very little in common with Mary. I'd never want to draw any parallels between the two. Ok, reclining.

I also think there should be some feathers involved. The Queen has a bird catcher, Papageno, who is extremely prominent in the opera and feathers are pretty traditional in the costuming. I lean more towards dark blues accented with black rather than mostly black. My own Queen dress was one of the best I'd ever seen and it was mostly black with navy and plum, but I like more blues in designs I've seen. Shows better on stage.

There must be beads. Preferably beaded and sheer fabrics. It must look like shimmering night... I like the color gradations in some of the pics above - maybe I'll do some dying of silks.

6/23/04: More planning

I've been thinking about this doll more and more and doing more peeking around online. I'm not so sure I can make the kind of doll I want to make in the time I have allotted.

One of the specifications for this show is that the head/arms/feet cannot be cast. All the doll bodies I have are for porcelain parts I've painted so I went searching today for some doll body patterns online. I found this one first but as I looked over the instructions I decided it is WAY too complicated for me right now. It also doesn't give me the more "adult" looking face I'd like.

Then I found this one. The pattern is much simpler than the first doll, though it is in no way an easy project. I will not be making the kimono but the doll itself has many of the elements I wanted: a mature face that's mainly painted, a slim body profile, separate fingers, a minimum of wire structure. I had contemplated sculpting a doll of a bake-able clay but then you get into the problems of having to sew all  of the clothes right on the doll. This solves that problem, too.

I find it interesting that both of these doll designers are Japanese (check out Runo's gallery page) while most available American designers I came across were making more simple, rag-doll types of dolls. Nuthin' wrong with that, of course. Just interesting to me...

I also made a quick trip to the fabric store and picked up some flesh colored knit jersey for the skin, which I'll layer over muslin for stability, and some crystal tie dyed stretch velvet. I haven't decided if I'll use it yet but it was all in funky blues and was on sale. This is precisely why I spend more than I need to on every project I make. Poor planning plus impulse buying. Bad me! I had more thoughts last night about maybe making more of a Victorian style dress with the train in peacock feathers. That would tie in the bird theme nicely. In this case, she would have to remain standing - maybe no moon...

I also like the thought of having the bodice area and perhaps sleeves or long gloves be basically just beads glued to the doll without a base fabric "garment". That way I could fade them up the décolleté to nothing or wave them up in a flame pattern... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So, the first thing I need to do is take a crack at the actual doll. If I don't make much progress on it quickly, there will be little point in slogging away at the clothes.

7/4/04: A Good Start

Well, I finally hauled out the machine again and got started. I started by cutting out all the pieces in cotton muslin and stretch "skin" jersey. I found as I started pinning that it was going to be easier to draw the pattern onto the muslin and clip a seam allowance after sewing. That jersey is pretty slippery and much stretchier in one direction than the other. Difficult stuff to work with. So I drew out all the pattern pieces onto new muslin, and re-cut all the skin pieces, and started sewing.

I got the torso sewn and stuffed and it came out a very pleasant shape. Then I started on the head, which was a very unusual method. I sewed the base shape in muslin, which had seaming quite different than any other doll I've looked at. Then, on that base, after stuffing and wiring the neck and head, I created a nose of cotton wrapped wire, stuck into and glued to the center front seam. I added some cotton glued to the base to cover up some slight seam puckering around the jawline seam, added a couple of glued rolls of cotton as a base for the lips, then stretched my first layer of skin over it and sewed it down.

7/13/04: Starting to look like a face

Well, my parents came up to visit for a day and during Claire's nap mom pulled out some dolls she's been working on. We bartered skills a bit - she wanted help on some costuming for her dolls, I wanted help on the sculpting of the face on my doll. We had our little sewing circle. I got the second layer of skin onto the head and did a minimal amount of sculpting to pull in the eyes and shape the mouth.

In stitching the second layer of skin down around the chest area, I pulled the edge a bit too hard and got a run in the jersey. I'm pissed. I can't replace it without undoing all the needle sculpting, so I guess I'll just have to cover it with decorations when I get to it.

Now, onto the limbs...

7/19/04: A big F*** You from my doll's hands!

Ok, I'm trying not to take this personally... LOL! I have sewn the doll's legs, turned & stuffed them, and sewn the arms. In trying to turn those tiny fingers I have only managed to turn the two middle fingers (prior to sewing the dividing line between them. So it looks like my little doll is flipping me off in a very unladylike way. Harumph. I am now in search of a coffe straw thin enough to turn those little fingers, or else I'll just have to submit a very rude doll!

7/20/04

I got the legs sewn to the body, and that's about it.

I've made a couple of sketches of dress ideas... I found some really great iridescent blue taffeta, some plain and some with a black floral designed flocked on with subtle sparkles. Kind of velvety, pretty and very "night" but not sure about the floral motif. I also found some great taffeta blue ribbons; one 3/4" in velvet and another 2.5" with silver edges. That one will be perfect to make the kick pleat ruffle from, especially since it's wired so the pleats will do exactly what I want - in theory!

I also experimented a little with the facial painting. I had no idea what kinds of paints or inks would work on this jersey skin so I tried some shapes drawn with a very fine art marker and used some opaque white Rapidograph ink for the eyes. That bled a little by the next day so I went back over it with acrylic. I haven't decided what to do on the actual doll, yet.

9/2/04

Well, I've gotten some done on the clothes and I think it's going to look simply smashing. I've done very small pleats around the entire straight underskirt and then used some braided trim every 2 inches to keep the pleats in place. I then added a kick ruffle of double box pleated wire-edged ribbon to the bottom. When I had some sittin-around time in Redlands I glued tiny star shaped glitter into all the loops on the trim running up the skirt.

When I started draping the train portion of the overskirt I ran into some problems. The taffeta is not particularly stiff for normal clothes but for doll-sized clothes it turned out to be quite feisty. I finally got a shape I think with drape well, added a box pleat ruffle around the edge in the same silver edged ribbon from the kick pleats, and will gather it into a waist band.  The plan is to use the peacock feathers on the train to look kind of like a bird tail. I also glued the star glitter and some larger star shaped baubles to the feathers. It's hard to tell on the overall tail/train pic but the feather pic shows you more of the glittery effect.

6/19/06: Back in business... two years later!

So, it has been two years since I promised a doll and did not deliver for my mom's doll show. :-( I am a bad daughter. She said that this year participation was a little light and the club was going to hold a stich-n-bitch to get dolls done for the show, and would I like to participate and finally finish that darned doll I've been promising her. The gathering is next Sunday and I have some things to do this week to get it ready for finishing then.

I am immensely unhappy with the head (seen above in the 7/13 and 9/2 entries) and thought I'd like to try sculpting one out of modeling clay. So, that's what I did on Sunday. What a pain! Every time I get one part of the face in good shape I push another part out of shape just trying to hold on to it while I'm working. gggrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I finally have it in ok shape so I'm leaving it for the evening, taking hubby to dinner for papa's day and I'll get back to it with a fresh eye tonight.

I chatted with my mama and when I asked her about baking this stuff she said, "Oh no, I've always put a ball of tinfoil in the middle with a thin layer of clay over it for doll heads. Otherwise it will never finish baking and the outside might crack before the inside ever hardens." Now I know. I guess it's ok - I'm not too heartbroken. I was going to try two or three heads and use the best one, especially since the first on is very "character-ey" and looks vaguely like a cross between Patrick Stewart and Audrey Hepburn on steroids.

When hubby got home I proudly presented it to him and he looked frightened, backed away from it, and asked if he could squish it because it was so disturbing. Like I said, it looks character-ey, but I was happy it just looked at all like a head, since I've never done anything like this before. LOL!

I looked at it again this morning and I like it a lot. I may try and salvage it by cutting the back off and hollowing it out to put in the foil ball before baking. I hope I don't ruin it.

Here's some in-progress pics of my first attempt...

6/24/06: gggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Ok, I fully understand that sculpting figures is a skill that takes years to develop, but puh-leeze! This is ridiculous! I am actually very happy with all 3 of my head attempts, just not for this doll. I really like how character-ey they are, but now I will have to make 3 male dolls to go with these heads because none of them will work for this QotN doll. gggrrrrrrrrrrrrr

So, here they are.

I think I'm going to take another crack at a cloth head. Now the problem is being stricken by a migraine and not getting to go to the stitch-n-bitch to finish this up. :-( I'll keep working on it but I'm not sure I'll get it done for this year either.

7/14/06: How many heads are better than one?

My folks came for a visit and I got to work on my doll project with my mother near by to give me advice and unending patience. She also has these really cool tools for turning little fingers...

So, I now have hands and a head I can live with, YEAH! I ended up laughing with her about the clay heads and went to work on the original fabric one again. I stripped it down to the base layer and built up the features from scratch, put a new "skin" on it and re-sculpted it. This is where mama's advice is invaluable since this is what her specialty is. She brought a sample head with her (that started life looking like a potato) and sat next to me showing how to sculpt certain areas just to get them to stand out a little better. It's basic stuff but I didn't want it to be too involved, just serviceable.

We tried making 3 sets of hands that were just too narrow and kept tearing through the fabric while turning. I finally makes some from the "skin" fabric which has a little stretch in one direction but managed to make them not too fat.

Next I need to finish painting the features and start adding hair made of peacock feathers; and stuff the the arms and attach them to the body.