More dolls

As well as the resin figures covered in the last post, I have five china-head dolls that I had picked up cheaply in sales bins at shows.  They obviously don't look as realistic but I am hopeful I can use them to add more customers to the quilt and knitting shops.

I will put my hand up and admit that dressing dolls is not my forte.  If I'm on a course with a teacher to guide me, then I can turn out a reasonable product.  Left to my own devices, I generally end up with something that looks more like a mutant.

Here are the 'before' pictures.

The doll at the right is wearing a hand-knit jumper that I bought separately.  She was the least in need of attention, so I started with her.

I stripped off the remains of her blouse and took off the trousers.  They were way too big, with a crotch that was about half an inch too low.  So I raised the crotch and slimmed down the legs with some stitching.

I also cut off the waistband and re-stitched the front and back seams to reduce excess.

Then I put it back on the doll, hand stitched the pleats in again, and gathered up the waist.

As she was suffering from a major bad hair day, I trimmed up the hair with nail scissors and then sprayed her whole head with hair spray to smooth down the fly-aways.

Then the handknit jumper went back on.

Now she is having a good dig into the sales bin in the knitting shop.

The next mutant to receive some attention was the older bag lady in the head scarf.  I stripped off all of her clothes, and peeled off her wild hot-glued hair mop.  I had some grey hair in my stash already formed into ripples, so I glued some of that on to create a hairstyle, and added some bead earrings.

For her clothing, I cut up an old cardigan. I used a bit of the ribbed collar for her skirt, and then cut a pattern out of kitchen paper towel for her tunic top.

I cut the tunic out all in one piece, hemmed under the cuffs at the wrist, and applied glue along the cut edge of the back and front to stop fraying.  Then I cut a slit for the neck, and sewed the side seams on the sewing machine.  I wasn't sure what to do with the neckline, as I thought trying to turn it under would be too bulky.  So I glued on some mini rickrack.  I'm not entirely happy with it, perhaps I should have tried to do a collar.





And here she is, taking part in the quilting workshop on the top floor.

Two dolls was all that I had time for, so three more to go.