Making a Father Christmas Doll - Part 8

Tabs stapled to base.

The doll is starting to come together.  In earlier blog posts I showed how to make the face and arms and how they are attached to the body.  Soon it will be time to add the robes and accessories, but the doll is not quite at that point yet.  Today the blog will show how to make this doll stand.  There are many ways to make a doll stand.  The choice of how to make a doll stand depends on the type of doll, available materials, and time.  The doll I am making is a relatively quick and primitive doll.  The solution for making it stand up will be fairly primitive as well.

Standing on his own.

Up until now, the bottom of the doll body has been pinned shut with safety pins.  Once the pins are removed, the bottom is open and the polyester fiberfill is visible.  Use scissors to make a clip at three-eights of an inch on each side of each side seam.  Then make three clips across the front and back at two inch intervals from the initial clips.  The clips should be one-half inch high.  Take care when measuring the clips to make sure that they are the correct height.  You may notice it later if they are not the same.  Most of it will be covered by trim later, but it is possible that a clip could show above the trim.

Glass bead medium on base.

Once the clips are made the tabs made by make clips are stapled to a wooden base using a staple gun.  I found that it worked best by stapling one tab on the front then one on the back.  Then I continued to work

Glass bead medium looks like ice and snow.

my way around the base of the figure stapling opposite tabs.  I also found it necessary to tuck in a little more fiberfill around the base to make the figure look completely stuffed.  It is not the most elegant solution to mounting a doll to a base, but it is effective.  The idea for this doll is that the trim of the coat will cover the staples.  A different solution would have been to make it a design feature and used decorative upholstery tacks to nail into the tabs.  If someone had made that choice, I would recommend that they use Fray Check on the edges of the tabs to prevent the cloth from fraying.

The instructions for the pattern doll I am creating said that once the doll was stapled to the base that you used modeling compound to cover the base.  I used a plastic artists pallet knife to apply the material.  It was supposed to make it white and look like snow.  The instructions said to cover the base up to the edge of the tabs.  I decided to apply the modeling compound both under and over the tabs as well.  This added a further layer of glue to hold the doll in place.  I was careful to prevent the modeling compound from smearing onto the doll body.  However, it would not have ruined the doll if "snow" was on the fabric.  After all when you walk in snow, you get snow on your clothes.

I was rather disappointed with the modeling compound.  Yes it was white and anyone could look at it and see that it was supposed to look like snow, but the texture was wrong and it had a very flat matte finish.   I thought I could do better.  I had some glass bead medium left over from a previous project.  I mixed the medium with some pearlizing medium to give it some soft luster.  The beads in the mixture looked a lot like ice crystals.  The mixture reflected light and seemed more like snow than the modeling compound.  I think it is an improvement, but I guess that is a matter of personal preference.

This part of the project caused a bit of a delay in working on the doll.  The modeling compound took overnight to dry.  The bead mixture took another overnight drying period, mainly because I put it on so thickly.  Two days of down time is a lot when you are in a rush.  I was following the directions in the order they were given in the doll instructions.  With twenty-twenty hindsight, I can say that I would have covered the base first and let it dry while I was working on other parts of the doll.

So now the doll is standing.  Next blog will be about finishing the robe and trimming the garment.