Before warm weather gets away entirely, I wanted to post a picture of an art doll that I made back in 1994. I was just learning to make soft sculpture dolls back then. She is slightly over four inches tall. I rarely work with figures this small, but at the time art doll pins were popular. This doll has a broach pin sewn onto the back. Although she is a little too large to be used as jewelry, during the summer I sometimes pinned her to my purse. The doll is a basic "pancake" doll pattern. The body is made from flesh colored doll makers cloth. The stuffing for the doll is polyester fiberfill. Her face and body are sculpted using ivory colored thread. Once the soft sculpture was completed, the eyes and lips were painted on with craft paints mixed with fabric medium.
The doll's hair and hula skirt are made from embroidery thread. Each piece of hair and the hula skirt are individually sewn on to the doll. The bandeau top and her bikini bottom are made of grosgrain ribbon. (It has always been a debate among doll makers as to whether or not it was really necessary to have underwear on a doll since you generally cannot see it. But yes, my dolls are completely dressed.) The bandeau top was painted to coordinate with the color of the skirt. Her "lei" is made from small seed beads because it was just to hard to make flowers that small.
It was a fun project to make and I learned a lot about doll making from it. From time to time I will be posting pictures of some of my earlier dolls. Hopefully, you will see the progress I've made over the course of the years.
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