Rag Time

Perhaps because I wasn’t allowed to play with a lot of dolls, I have always enjoyed them.  I had dolls of my own, boy dolls and a Miss Piggy doll.  But anything too specifically for girls was denied me by my parents growing up.  So as soon I was able to take a needle and thread in hand and make my own fortunes, I began to make dolls for myself.  These first dolls were puppets that I started making at the age of fourteen, and I thought I would become a puppeteer all through high school.  Later I allowed myself to make actual dolls.  Puppets have a purpose, but real dolls needed to be made for others, not for myself.  So I made dolls such as this one, which I made for my Grandma Alice:

As I grew, I began to make dolls more for artistic experiments and I allowed myself to keep them.  The patterns, such as the patterns I made up for my puppets, came from my mind and a vague idea about putting needle to material.  Usually I cut out a great many shapes from fabric without drawing the shape to see if it might work in actuality.  Most of my creations were skewed in small ways.  I began to make dolls with heads that were more shaped than the gathered circles of fabric I had been using for heads. 

I came up with a Granny Witch first.

And then I pulled out a fair bit of ribbon and made a Moon Goddess. 

Still refusing to follow any sort of a pattern, I came up with a folk doll inspired by a mythology that has heavily influenced not only me, but modern pop culture as well: Star Wars.  I made a twi’lek doll, inspired by the slave girl from Jabba the Hut’s lair in Episode Six: Return of the Jedi. 

Only in the last couple of years have I discovered patterns.  I ordered the “Kit, Chloe, and Louise” pattern from Wee Wonderfuls, Hilary Lang’s blog and made two dolls, whom I love:

Thetis

and Robin

These patterned dolls taught me a good lesson about drawing shapes and crafting the look of the doll before jumping into cutting and sewing.  Right now I am going through a few sketches to try to hone in on the look of my dolls before I forge ahead with making patterns of my own.  Hopefully I will have more specimens of my own creation to show everyone soon.