Learning to make shoes

  I have wanted to learn to make shoes for a long time. When the doll is made with barefeet, it is, while not necessary, nice to have them a pair of good shoes to wear to finish off their outfit. Most of the people like the barefeet, so that is what I make the most. There is a pattern I found that makes a cloth shoe that looks like the old fashioned hightop boot. By changing the pattern some, I made it smaller with snaps on the inside to close the flap securely for putting on and taking off the boots. The buttons on the outside are for show,  and do not work.  I wanted to use the old shoe buttons, but they have to have button holes. The snaps are easy, hidden on the inside of the shoe and it is so easy to put the shoes on. One of the dolls has on the first pair of shoes I have made, the other doll will get some too, but maybe a little shorter on the calf of the leg. It took me days and days to figure out the adjusted pattern pieces and I know I can improve on these with time, but atleast I have a start. The pictures of these two dolls are dressed up for the UFDC National Convention. The little shoes are not really hard to make once you get the pattern right. You cut two pieces of each part, sew together, turn outside in and sew up the hole. there are 4 pieces, the sole, the flap, the heel and the toe piece. I did put in a hard cardboard sole on the inside of the shoe that sits on top of the cloth sole. It was smooth white and looks good and keeps the shoe sole rigid and correct. The inside piece of cloth is your liner of the shoe. I made my shoes black this time, but in the future, they can be brown, white or mixed colors, also I learned to gesso the outside of the shoe white first to keep the acrylic paint from bleeding in to the liner. the last step is to polish your boots with regular shoe polish that you put on, let dry and buff off. This needs to be done several times. this gives a soft skin and the look and feel of real leather.

 I do think that most people would like for their dolls to have a pair of shoes like this, especially the Izannah dolls, so I will have to keep working to make different size patterns to fit larger feet.

Izannah Dolls headed to the UFDC Convention

One day I'm gonna break up my writing and picture showing style, but for now this will have to do. You have heard people say they can't do two things at once, well that's me. I have to do one thing at a time. I was making some dolls, just extra dolls, not for anyone in particular, and I talked to a lady who is going to the UFDC Convention in Washington DC. this year in July. She is going as a vendor this year, so she has lots of time for selling dolls. She makes porcelain dolls and she is a doll appraiser. She is going to take these girls to the convention. I am getting ready to make their clothes. I tea stained some cream calico fabric and will make two dresses just alike for these two, unless another color seems to look better on one of them. They are nice big hefty dolls about 22" tall with comfortable bodies, The upper legs have been weighted to help even out the overall weight. I imagine they will weight about 2 lbs each. I like these dolls, they each have been finished out in the rougher, more worn and aged look. If they are not old when I start working on them, they are definitely older when I get through. A few sessions with me and my nifty dental pick will do that to any doll. Bless their little doll hearts. I will post some pictures of their ( going to the big convention clothes )

 as soon as I'm done.

Katherine's Izannah Doll

I made a doll for a very sweet and gracious lady named Katherine. She wanted an Izannah doll that looked old and had the same sweetness and personality that Izannah Walker was able to give her dolls. Well, that is a tall order. To me Izannah Walker was unique and very gifted to create and bestow on her dolls an aura of  quiet sweetness that we don't see on other dolls. In the folkart paintings of long ago you do see the small children and their pets who are precious in there innocence, quaint clothes and backgrounds. I did my best to make such a doll.

Izannah Rag Doll Pinkeep

 I made, or thought I made a normal headed rag doll to give to a friend of mine, but something happened. Somewhere along the way, the pattern went wonky and this girl came out with a small head and tiny neck.  ( what happened? ) HaHa. I started to discard the doll altogether, but she was kind of cute after I got her painted, so I made a pinkeep out of her. I intended to make a good rag doll with the gusset in the head to make the head deeper, but ended up with this doll. She will be a faithful helper to any person who sews, keeping the pins at the ready all the time. Her dress is a really old calico that I have no idea where or when I got it. I made some adjustments and put it on her with her quilted pinkeep. She do

es boast a pretty slip underneath her dress too.

Mona Lisa's new dress

Here is Mona Lisa all dressed up. I can't make straw bonnets, so I made a cloth matching bonnet for her. The dress is antique reproduction blue calico. I saw it on Silent Stitches web site and just loved it. Her underwear is cotton with cotton lace with no ageing at all. I thought the white against the dark blue would be pretty. the lace is a little tan though. This waist line on the dress is my own design. It has a double waist band, and gathered top with a narrow collar around top. I am not a seasoned seamstress, but we have much improved in our clothes making and are venturing out to a little more complicated dresses. Friday we went to the Highway 11 flea market. We traveled about a 20 mile strip. It is fun and I always enjoy it. I found some cotton lace, some small vintage doll clothes, sewing thread, twine, and a bunch of toys for the kids. I also found what I think was a bedspread, but it is super thin and the designs on it are faded and some worn off.  I think it will make some good slips, or some rag doll dresses. Happy doll making to you all through out

 the summer.

Standing Bears

 After looking at lots of bears over time on ebay and other blogs, I decided to get a pattern and try to make some. I got the sitting bears and standing bear patterns from Sweet Meadow Farms. The pattern is nice and not to difficult to do, or else I wouldn't have been able to make them. I made simple primitive country bears out of osnaburg, as with no experience in bear or animal making I needed to keep it simple, but I will say, that I do really like them a lot, even though they don't have fur. The sitting bear is cute, but I really like the standing bears. They seemed to have more character to me, I guess it's in the head shape and they are so cute just standing there. Here are pictures of the two I finished. I have another, but it is still naked.

My little Sweetie Belle

  I have another little beauty made by Sherri Farley who I have named  " Sweetie Belle ".  As many of you know,  Sherri's blog site is Make Do Dolls, and you can see many wonderful cloth Dolls, cloth Animals,  as well as,   doll chairs she has for sale,  and she makes ornaments from molds which are so special. I like George and Martha Washington in particular. This little doll I now have is a black cloth doll filled with cedar sawdust, and has a hand stitched face. Sherri knows I like red dresses and so she made Sweetie Belle a beautiful, perfect fitting Red dress, a special multicolored petticoat, and her chemise and pantyloons. A

long with the doll, Sherri sent a cotton bale that is the perfect size for my doll to sit on to watch our comings and goings everyday. She is sweetness itself, meet and quiet and such a treasure. This little cotton bale is a lot like the huge 500 lb. bales that used to be baled up around here, as we have many gins around here. they are no longer in business as big commercial companies now do all this work. Some of the buildings do remain for us to see. I do need to make my little girl a sunbonnet and although she has a little friend for now, perhaps a baby of her own. Thank you Sherri for this little special doll and for making me see by looking at her work, that when I make dolls or clothes I need to go the extra mile to get perfection like she does.

Izannah Dolls

Two Izannah Dolls, different heads, different look, but with the same painting technique on each.  These are new molds, and I like both of them. I described these dolls as having been primitively painted, but in reality, while this process for these two was short, it required restraint on my part, and knowing how to stain and then apply finishing touches. You can get a fine polished look by sanding and painting and repeating the process a lot, and some dolls need this, but these two were painted in three steps taking only about a good week to finish. First, I gessoed the doll, then, without sanding at all, I painted one coat of oil paint and let dry, then I began the distressing, using a super gentle sanding over one time, then taking my tools,  I distressed my girls as much as I thought they needed, with various tools, such as a dental pick, and turning the sandpaper on edge to get better splitting. After all this was done, which only takes a few minutes, I mixed up my oil stain using burnt umber oil paint and Ivory black oil paint, and mixed this in cold pressed linseed oil. Once the stain is put on and rubbed off, I went back with my paint and applied heavy flesh color where needed, touched up the eyes, worked on tweeting out the mouth and cheeks, which on the cheeks you have to be careful using not to much paint, and a very dry brush. the texture of the cloth on the doll is rough, but the extra buildup of paint in certain areas, gives the appearance of old paint that has not began coming off yet, atleast this is what it looks like to me. I don't think you can appreciate the look of the doll with just the head, but it needs the whole body painted in the same way and appropriate clothes to get the full effect of a old looking doll. My experiments continue and I am still learning new things I can do on the dolls. These instructions are for anyone's benefit and hopefully you will be inspired to try some ageing on your dolls.

Mona Lisa

This is Mona Lisa, a 19" Izannah doll. She has a molded cloth head, stitched fingers, applied thumbs and ears and painted boots, also an aged sateen second skin. She has been undergoing ageing experiments for quite a long time, but now I am satisfied she is good. I actually think she is beautiful. I'm not totally done, as I have to touch up arms and legs, and paint out and polish her boots, and of course make her some clothes. I have not ever mentioned this before in my blog posts, but if there is any interest in this doll, I will be happy to talk about it, as my husband needs a new lawn mower, and I will have to help him pay for it. She will be reasonable, and not listed at an outlandish price. It takes me a long time to make clothes, and lots of people want to get or make their own clothes, so if I don't have to make the clothes, it is easier for me. email is Martha@maboriginals.com

Ageing new Fabrics

I may have some protests when my neighbors ride past the house and see all the long lines of fabric hanging on the fences with clothespins on them, but I don't have years to wait until the fabrics are naturally faded, so I had to take matters into my own hands.HaHa Have you ever really thought about what people do to get things to look old. They bleach them, coat them in lemon juice and put them in the sun, bake them in the oven,  take a hammer and chains and beat things up, poor all sort of concoctions on items, sand repeatedly, or use a sand blaster,  and MY SPECIALTY, which leaves the dolls tembling when they see this is ( bringing out the dental tools ). It's funny now, but my husband used to walk in the room and see me sanding away on a poor doll until it's cloth would split, or cutting  off ears or noses with abandon, like throwing away a banana peel, he just grimaced  and walked away, I believe he was really concerned  about me, or he couldn't bear to watch what I was doing to and probably ruining more good dolls.

 I am hanging out lots of pieces of fabric in the weather for about a month, through wind, sun and rain. Hopefully this will give me some fading and probably a few small holes. I realize this is still not as good as antique fabric, but the sun, rain, and wind and space on the fences is free, not so antique fabrics. When I do get a special piece of some old cloth, I am afraid to use it, for fear, I'll never get another piece of anything like it. So, if you are brave, and can justify your actions to your neighbors, I think it is worth a try to get the look of clothes you want. I don't know if the people long ago had these problems. did they try to make antique dolls too, and had to scrape up fabric to do what they wanted. Who knows, but Izannah Walker was a person who I think would not have been above doing something like this to get the results she wanted.

Making Primitive Bears

Here are two of the three primitive bears I have made so far. These girls are for my two Niece's Easter baskets. These are pretty easy to make. I made a sitting bear, but these two have legs and arms that are movable. I started with a pattern I bought, I think from Sweet meadows Farm, but found it was not strong enough for children to play with, so I modified it to be stronger, more flexible and child friendly. I inserted antique glass eyes I got on ebay, they are so pretty and add a lot to the bears. I have some faux fur to try to make some, but decided the osnaburg bears would be better to try out first. I like their old friendly primitive look and hope my little nieces will too. Hoping for everyone a happy Easter and always happy doll making.

New Rag Dolls in their new dresses

 These are the last two in a group of 8 rag dolls I have been working on for about 2 months, they are all finished now and ready to go to the store. There is a store in Kewanee, Miss. I think it is called the Simmons-Wright Store. It is on the historical register being over 100 years old. The original store was wood, but burned down and was rebuilt back in brick. It is being run now by the heirs of the Simmons and Wright families. It's a neat place. They have the real old cotton baskets and cotton with seeds in it from way long ago. Old tools and antiques, plus they serve food now. The balcony has shelves of shoes that were stocked there in the 20's and thirty's, still in the boxes, ofcourse, they are dry rotted now. In it's heyday, it was a bustling place, as right behind the store is the old Cotton Gin which is not open, but houses the old machines. If you have never seen a cotton Gin, it's facinating how these machines could take the seeds out of the cotton. It supplied folks in the closer surrounding areas of Mississippi and Alabama, and the railroad tracks are just across the street. We have several Gins down here. The one in Jackson, Miss. can still operate, but it is a museum now. Another big Cotton Gin, which I have painted several times, and thankfully have taken pictures of, has been taken down now. I went over to this store lots of times, but on my last visit, while  trying to buy up the last of the old, old, fabrics, which have been up in the balcony for years and years, the lady ask me what I was going to do with the material, I told her make dolls, both Izannah reproductions and Rag dolls too. She ask me to bring some over to the store to sell, and I said I would.

This store is located on  Hwy 11,  and  is the highway that the famous Highway 11 fleamarket is on every  year in May. It travels through several states. I always go atleast 20 or 30 miles of it, so much fun. I really don't know if there will be any interest in these dolls, but the lady in the store will enjoy them. You never know if what you make will be something other people will want, but i made things i liked, so hopefully others will to.