Cloth doll making- looking back!

For a while now I’ve been trying to figure out how to make good cloth dolls, and I’m definitely not quite there yet. Rather than looking at the ones I can make now I thought today I’d look back one one I made over a period of time a year or so ago! I tried out lots of things for the first time with this doll and learned lots to do differently the next time.

I constructed her head with a layer underneath which i put the “skin” on top of to give it a bit more shape. Sort of like a Waldorf doll! Except this doll is stuffed with polyester fibre. Her face was painted with acrylic paints and it a little quirky! She was going to have all white hair to start with. It took me a lot of time to even work up the motivation to give her hair. Poor girl. I now know how to make the neck of dolls less floppy, but at the time I had no idea and all that hair is quite heavy so when you carry her she does flop a little.

I’m a bit lacking in full body photos of her so here’s one I took for my college sketchbook a while back:

I initially bought those shoes and made that dress (out of the top of a beautiful christening dress) for my MSD size bjd. The dress doesn’t fit her amazingly, but the shoes really help her to stand! She has thread jointed limbs which are so much fun for posing. Her hair is in that style because there is a lot a lot of it and if I free it it goes utterly crazy.

I wish I could find more of this beautiful honey coloured skin fabric, but I have no idea where it came from! I might post more about the dolls I made before this blog existed as it’s really useful to have somewhere to see my (I hope!) progress. I searched my iphoto for a date so I could say exactly when this girl was made, but I can’t find any work in progress photos of her on here so she could be older than I thought!

Thank you so much for reading! -Julia