Category Archives: dolls

First Doll Rebecca

crafts, dolls, family,

I’ve begun sewing doll clothes for a Christmas present, and my sewing room is starting to get messy again, with all the scraps and pattern pieces swirling about like my creative juices. This doll and her clothes were waiting on the bed in that room, and as they have already been lost in the house several times in the last years, I thought I better take their pictures right away and add to my blog sewing archives the first successful doll clothes I ever made.

Oh, I sewed some other ones by hand when I was ten years-old or so, for my Barbie. But I didn’t have a pattern, just laid the doll on some scraps, cut out what looked to me like the shape the garment should take, and when I sewed the pieces together I was always surprised at how ill-fitting the clothes were. I can almost see the very shirts and dresses in my mind, though I threw them away pretty early.

Rebecca was the first doll given to my first daughter Pearl. She was hard and small and her limbs didn’t move, but I thought she was good enough to be The Doll, and I discouraged relatives from giving Pearl any more because “She has a doll already.” I was different then.

Sewing for a doll like that is challenging; knitted clothes are a bit easier to get on when the dolly insists on holding her arms stiffly by her side. I wasn’t an experienced knitter but I found some patterns for much larger doll clothes at the thrift store and managed to adjust them for this little mite. This gives me hope that in the future I might be able to at least knit a dishcloth that I like.

The pictures show most of the wardrobe I made for Rebecca 30-plus years ago. Nowadays I like to use velcro fasteners; I don’t know if we didn’t have it back then or if I just liked the old-fashioned and time-consuming snaps or button loops that the little girl almost certainly couldn’t do up for her own doll. As I recall, the young children are good at ripping off the dolls’ clothes and then they come to Mama to help them dress up the dolls again. If Mama is busy there can be a lot of naked dollies lying around.

Pearl did eventually get some other dolls, the My Friend Dolls made by Fisher-Price, and I sewed for them a little. I never thought to take photos of the clothes, but I plan to, next time I see Mandy, Becky and Jenny.

For the granddaughters’ dolls, so far I’ve only made the clothes for Maxi-Muffin shown here. Now I’m working on an American Girl type of doll clothes, for which many patterns are available. With luck I’ll have some photos of these creations within the month.

Because — Christmas is COMING!

Long Doll on the Straw

crafts, dolls, music

 The latest charming doll lady I saw was at an outdoor event where we sat on straw bales and listened to Patrick Ball play his mesmerizing Celtic harp.

On the row of bales right in front of us was this dolly, alongside her Little Girl and the Girl’s mommy and daddy. I couldn’t decide if she was a gypsy or a babushka, but she made me want to sew a doll and dress her in a flowered skirt and a blouse with full sleeves.

Beyond the Girl in the top picture you can barely see the harpist’s face up on the stage. I never got to see Long Doll’s face.

She was wearing a head covering like many other people that evening, because the wind was blowing through very cold! Yes, even in the Merry Month of May.

Once the Girl grabbed her doll and I got a blurry shot of her willowiness. But she was right away tossed aside.

Long Doll seems to have fallen right asleep where she landed.

I’ve Made More Doll Clothes Than Dolls

crafts, dolls, family

Three times I’ve made sets of clothes for store-bought dolls, not counting the ones I made for my own Barbie doll when I was nine or ten. (I can still picture those crude trial-and-error shirts and dresses that never fit very well.) It would be nice to make some more, and maybe I will, when I get the sewing room cleaned up. Well, then, why am I not in there this moment working on that? I’m tired, and need to rest a bit on my laurels, even though they are old laurels by now.

I did make clothes two years ago for a granddaughter’s Götz toddler doll. The doll is wearing her original outfit above.

I took my patterns from Joan Hinds’s Sew Baby Doll Clothes. First I sewed some overalls from a Hannah Anderson skirt I had found ages ago at the thrift store, and got the hat trim from my scrap bag–or I should say, one of my many boxes of scraps.

A checked dress started out as another thrift store find, a man’s shirt that B. decided he didn’t want. The fabric was in great shape, so I couldn’t throw it out.

Finally I made a nightgown with a pink fleece blanket and pillow to coordinate with both.

When I last saw this Doll Baby, she was dressed in one new outfit and had lent another one to her sister. They were lying together in their cradle, so endearing that I resolved to go home and sew more clothes. There were other scantily clad dolls lying around who tugged at my heart. But I went home and got distracted by other projects and haven’t sent any care packages to the doll family to this day.

Surprise South American Doll

crafts, dolls, family

I have made a few dolls in my lifetime, and my plan is to make at least a few more if God gives me the years. I’ll have to drum up the discipline myself, to go with my imagination. In the meantime I enjoy the ones I own, and want to memorialize them by posting their photographs here.

This knitted lady was given to me some years ago by the same daughter Pippin who gave me the last doll I wrote about. Rocío, as I have now named her, after a former neighbor, first gave me the impression of being from Scandinavian or northern territories, but I have been straightened out as to her ethnicity: she comes from South America–as Pippin calls it, “the llama/alpaca regions of the world.” That explains her sandals, which are like some I found today on a website that sells Peruvian dolls.

She is carrying her child in a sling on her back, and both Mom and Baby have hats with long tails.

Here you can see Baby Eva peeking out from behind her mother. I don’t know why I think the baby is a girl. Maybe because Pippin is a girl whom I used to carry on my back.

I persuaded the mom to lift her skirt a bit so you can see the detail of her knitted petticoat. That’s likely why she is looking so uncomfortably off into space.

This pose highlights her thick black braids that hang down. I did see online a couple of instances of headgear like hers on Andean dolls, but not one with her neutral colors, unusual in a land where bright colors are the rule, often contrasted with a black bowler hat.

You’d think Rocío’s black braids would have tipped me off that she is not European Nordic, but the truth is, I never until now examined her carefully or thought about her details–only fell in love at first vague impression.