The next doll

Yesterday morning I knew I wanted to start on a second doll. I had pretty definite ideas about how I wanted her to look and the colour palette I wanted for clothes. I had been so sure that over the weekend I had started making clothes. But I am getting ahead of myself...

I am waiting for more carded wool for stuffing to arrive, but guessed that I would have enough left from last time to do the head, with some left over. The wool had come from inside the a Jelly Baby doll that I took apart.

This pile of compressed wool had to be pulled apart and smoothed.

It ended up as this pile of loveliness. The process of smoothing took over an hour and was unbelievably therapeutic. I had started off with bad psychotic symptoms, with visual hallucinations of colours, patterns and numbers, but by the time I had finished, my mind was calm. The smell was also very, very soothing.

I got so involved in the head making process that I forgot to take pictures. It took in the region of 3 hours, much taking apart and restarting, checking online that I hadn't forgotten everything and using all the wool I had smoothed plus all the remaining left over 
wool.

I used a different hair method this time. I had bought a ball of mohair specially designed for doll making. You crochet a cap and fix it securely to the doll's head. Like so...

The next process is brushing it out. It is quite magical. From this dense cap, tufts of lovely soft hair start emerging...

What is casually omitted in the instructions is the fact that it takes 3 hours to do. The time was calculated by 2 episodes of Law 
and Order and 1 episode of The Great British Sewing Bee.

I love the result though.

I had planned that the hair would be left all ruffled and tousled. Couldn't do it. It felt wrong. Talking about wrong... These were the colours I had chosen for this doll. I put them together with her head and it all looked very wrong.

I now have all my doll making yarns in one basket so I sorted through those, and through my basket of fabrics.

These all jumped out at me. The fabric is handmade in a Fairtrade Indian co-operative and is very lightweight and a gorgeous olive green.

When I took this picture, I saw that the colours I had chosen were almost the same as the colours of the tissue box into which I had placed the doll's head.

I can sew the body but no more, until my wool order arrives. So 

I shall do some clothes making.