I don't want to model my sister's dress.

  Poor little Henry is having to model his sister's dress that matches his own outfit. He does look good in it,  though he protested the entire time and covered his face. I am so sorry Henry, but you are the only one who can wear the dress right now, and I do want to show it off a little. These two outfits are actually made up of several pieces of the same type of old tuffed  cotton dotted swiss fabric. In order to make the two outfits, I had to cut up about 4 or 5 small dresses and shirts, using all there was. I am proud of the clothes and think they were put to good use. Soon Henry can wear his own clothes again and hopefully be on his way to be with his Izannah family.

Henry

Henry is a nice big boy about 28" to 29" tall. He is being made for a nice lady who has a big girl and she wanted to complete her family of big dolls.  Henry is a sweet, mild and gentle doll, always with a small smile for you. He is going to do me a favor soon, as I have to make the sister a matching dress to his outfit of old white dotted swiss fabric. The dress will be a lot easier than his clothes. I have worked on this simple looking outfit for awhile. I have made him some black shoes, but they are still not finished as yet. Show off my pretty suit, he says, it is just right for me. I did have a lot of thinking to do on this outfit. I didn't want it to be Victorian, but, an all white suit seems to say that. I did look up suits for 1850's boys and there were a lot of white outfits, not exactly like this one, but very dainty too with ribbons and frills. Should I go with colored ribbons or buttons

to off set the white, I asked myself, but nothing seemed right, so he has his suit of unrelieved white. He doesn't want anyone to see him modeling the dress, but I'll sneek behind his back and show you when I get finished. Happy doll making to everyone.

A Sunday Afternoon visit to some old buildings.

On a Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, we went to take the dogs out and decided to go over to the Old Lockart church and cemetery. It was founded in, I think 1883 or 85. It is a pretty little building, but in bad shape now. the window panes are made of the old bubbled glass that curves and sways when you look at it. The cemetery has a lot of old graves and some not so old. We also went over to another old building that was once a warehouse right on the railroad. It is a neat  big long old building. It's nice to still see these places, because they will be gone soon enough. I've made lots of pictures in the past. the big warehouse used to be unpainted wood and luckily I got a picture of that. It has been painted now, in ( I imagine ) an attempt to keep it as long as possible. It is still very sturdy. My husband and I have made pictures of lots of the old buildings and houses in the past, because I painted and put some of these places in the pictures. Hope you enjoy looking at them and going with us.

Going to the Union- Confederate Cemetary

 We try to take our little dogs somewhere every afternoon about 7 o:clock when it cools down a little. Sometimes its just a walk down the road, there are lots of long dirt roads here. Our house is still on a dirt road. We have gotten used to it after 30 years. The other day we drove over to the Lauderdale Union-Confederate Cemetery. Its owned and maintained by the Daughters of the Confederacy. The grave yard is near the site where the Lauderdale Springs Hospital was during the Civil war. There is a natural spring there, with water coming up out of the ground, never stopping, cold and clear. During the Civil war soldiers were brought here from all over.  Over 1100 men are buried here. Only 29 names are on tomb stones though. There is a information stand under plexiglass that tell about the men and what they died of. A lot of it was infections, dysentery

,  gun shot wounds, malaria, gangrene, and the list goes on. What a sad and miserable time in our history. It is a sad place, to walk through it and know that so many men died there on those grounds and never saw their loved ones again. We took a few pictures to share of this historic place that is so close to home.

Home and Us

  We went out the other day and made a few pictures of the lake where we live. It's a private community. It is also gated, which I don't like, but I don't have any choice about that. All in all I do really like it here. We have been here for about 30 plus years, and it's home now for sure. Years ago we bought a lot here and decided to build us something to live in, which we did and it has evolved  over time into a pretty comfortable place. We bought some more lots around us, so we wouldn't get crowed by neighbors to close, and that is nice. It gives you room to breathe and lots of green empty spaces that make home more peaceful and quiet. I think a lot of people ( by today's standards ) would find the house lacking in a few conveniences, like central heat and air conditioning, but we have plenty of heat and air conditioners to keep us comfortable enough. Here is a  picture of me and my husband bobby,  and our dogs, Tootie and Fruity. I have always shied away from getting my picture taken, but why worry about it now. I told my husband to just take a picture of me at my worst. My shirt is on inside out. HaHa   In the weeks to come, I thought I would share some pictures of  our house and us. I have enjoyed seeing other folks pictures of their homes and them doing various things, so I thought I might do that too. The lake is beautiful and it is nice to be near so much water to enjoy.

Fashion Update

I made a few quicky pictures of my fashion. She is evolving steadily. I have her arms ready as well as Henry's arms, but haven't  sewed them on yet. There is always some little something to hold you off a little bit longer before getting everything in place. Look at her hair, isn't it just beautiful. I don't take any credit for that. I bought her hair. It's human and jet black, long and silky. I never had hair as pretty as this. My husband likes it down, but I still am hoping for a fancier hair do. she has delicate hands with stitched fingers, but they are not like an Izannah doll. I can't describe them, but you will see them soon enough. they are very dainty, but not tiny. She has an hour glass figure, big heavy upper legs, and fat shorter feet. She will need  hefty shoes for them.  I have decided on cream colored gauzy fabric for the underslip  and vintage cream to yellowish dotted swiss lace fabric. this particular fabric is hard to find, but I lucked up on a bunch of it awhile back. It was in huge curtain panels. I could never have bought enough fabric or found this on a bolt anywhere. Anyway, this is the plan. I have been looking for patterns, but nothing is anywhere near as big or fat in the chest and shoulderplate as she is. I'll keep looking though. I'm not sure I could, without tons of trouble, change the pattern to fit her from what it is originally. Henry is telling me that he is in the picture too. He also is coming along very well. His arms will be finished soon, and on to making him some clothes too. He is a sweet boy, but a little more grown up than I planned. Isn't that the way of doll making, or is it not enough planning or experience on my part to know how and what I need to do to get just the right look. I don't think I will ever have that kind of experience, and maybe it's better. My mistakes brings good things sometimes too. Have a happy doll making weekend and we will be posting some pictures of the lake and  some pictures of ourselves ( ouch ) on my next post.

Making a French Fashion doll

A very sweet girl I know loves black dolls. She loves all dolls, but has a huge collection of black dolls of all kinds and sizes. she mentioned to me that I might try to make her a black French fashion doll. Well...I began to try to search out pictures of the black french fashions, and through all my looking I found only about 3. Pictures abound of the white fashion dolls, but not so the black ones. I never saw one that I could really use, so I began to sculpt a beauty of my own, based on a white fashion. This doll is made of cloth. The head is another molded cloth head that I used to make this girl, or should I say Lady, so, this is the only one I have of her and no mold to make any others. I have bought her a black human hair wig that has long curls. I debated about a platinum colored skin wig, but decided it might be to modern, and we don't want modern, we want antique with all the frills. If you have looked at many fashion dolls, you probably have seen them with an empress wig, it is a wig that has curls piled on top of the head and long curls down the back, that is what I wanted, so we will have to try to style her hair that way. The hair is very silky and smooth, so I don't know how that will work out. For the moment I put cut off safety pins in her ears to keep my holes open for her real earrings she will have. Road block after road block has appeared before me on this doll, mainly, the leather arms. the body suit, the clothes and hat, and the French fashion shoes she will need. She needs all sorts of extras like a corset, a bustle, stockings and her jewelry. I am leaning toward Pink silk stripe fabric, as I think that would be very French. I just decided to put up her picture and one more of another doll I will talk about in a moment. This has and will continue to be a long undertaking. I stepped way out of my comfort zone on this doll. HaHa, but I am determined she will be the toast of Paris.   The other doll shown here is Henry. Henry is not finished yet, he still needs his lambskin wig, and a few other things. He is a sweet boy that the same girl wanted to go with her Izannah family she already has. Henry has been good and caused me absolutely no trouble and I will reward him with a set of clothes that includes a pretty white  shirt of vintage dotted swiss fabric that has big tuffs of cotton all over. I just love that stuff. If anyone has any suggestions about clothes, please tell  me, I am not very knowledgeable about lots of clothes, and I need to get the best dress I can for my fashion doll.

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.