New Dolls and work in progress

 Having a lot of trouble with my blog, not being able to get on and work on it has been a big problem. We finally figured a solution for now. Most of my time is taken up with taking care of my husband and mother who is 91 years old Jan. 7, so you can imagine how much of my time it takes to tend to their needs, but I do manage to work in some doll time as well. Here are two of my efforts that are farther along than these others you will see. I made another small version of my Izannah Walker reproduction doll that I bought from Kathy Patterson some years back. These copies are not true. They are smaller, made of cloth instead of composition heads, and  while they resemble the doll, they look different than her doll does. The composition heads to me are not satisfying. The reproductions should be made of cloth as far as I am concerned. The other one is  a large doll made using my own mold. She is pretty I think and I tried as I always do to give her the Izannah traits. Izannah's dolls hair varied with the dolls. Some were very dark, others had a sienna color mixed in the base of the curls. In the last several dolls I made, I painted the hair dark with the curls dark too, but will trend back to the more familiar side and neck curls with the lighter sienna color. What do you see when you look at early work that is just white and so far from finished? They look like aliens from space, but they also have character already in their faces. Harkness is the boy on the left, another large mold in the middle and another little Izannah on the right. The eyes are wonky and shoulders not quite perfect, but I stopped trying to correct these things to much. Our black Izannah is having her final stockinet put on and I always enjoy working on these. That face is so sweet to me. See the legs and feet, I had to make many corrections to get this foot, and I found out how to put the curve in the middle of the foot underneath, it was an accident. I had to go bac

k and sew the foot together and had to sew farther up on the outside of the foot and low and behold, I had that curve you see in Izannah's feet. Well, have a look and I hope enjoy the post.

A New Doll and Other Izannah's

 Here is a new doll. About 20 inches tall, Pressed Cloth Head. I think she is one of my best ones. This post is to put some of the latest dolls pictures on here. I hope you enjoy seeing them.

Izannah Walker Style Cloth Doll " Clima Hamilton "

It has been a long time since I have posted. Renovating houses takes up alot of time, but I have managed to finish one doll and have several smaller ones in the works. This doll is about 20 inches tall with a pressed cloth head, stitched hands and booted feet. It seems like it took a hundred forevers to finish her and glad I am to be done. There are alot of things that complicate and slow down doll making, but you just have to do the necessary and get back to the doll making as much as you can, allowing for time and the energy to do justice to the dolls. When you are to tired to work on the dolls, I say don't, because you will end up doing the work over again. Earlier this year I happened up on some yardage of the hard to find over dyed green calico fabric. For a long time on ebay I would see it in small pieces, and they were expensive too, so I spent some of my money from selling some dolls, and got as much of this fabric as I could. You notice I said selling some dolls, this is because it took several to buy supplies, namely two different patterns of the green over dyed fabric. Buying the antique fabric causes some hard decision making, because it is super expensive, it can be unusable when you get it, or you might not be able to get your money back on the dresses, or, you love it to much to be willing to give it away on dresses for your dolls, and plan to save it for the antique dolls only. I have made lots of dolls using antique fabric and only rarely regretted it, because sometimes the fabric is so old, it will have a smell that you cannot wash out. On the other hand, if you expect to get more money from the dolls,  people expect to get antique fabric. Always a quandary over using new reproduction cloth, ( no problems there ) or the old cloth which might or might not cause problems. Tough call sometimes. Clima has two pettycoats, one plain cotton and a second one of vintage lace made very full, just because I love to give the dolls these slips.  Hope you enjoy seeing her.