Friday, January 3, 2020

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.