Stick Doll Project

This is one of the stick dolls I've been making these last two weeks. The Austin Fiber Artists asked me to put together a one-day doll class for July. I'd been thinking on this for a while -- how to offer a class which would allow a beginner to discover the joy in creating a doll in one day.

If I teach my style a doll probably cannot be made in one day. It would be too time consuming and tedious. Plus, you never know what you're going to get. You might see the head and decide on a costume or surface design which you never considered before (which would require going back home and getting new materials). So a full doll in one day was out.

With these stick dolls I'm pretty sure I landed on a project which will take a full day and guarantee the participant a challenging, rewarding and fun experience. Hopefully she will want to continue the process and make more, maybe move on to bodies and hands. In any case, it's a workshop designed to teach the basic doll head, needle sculpting, eye placement and the attachment of the neck to the head which uses a stitch which is repeated often in the making of a full doll. The workshop will give exposure to doll tools, the threads and types of materials used, where to place the pattern on the grain of the fabric for different features, etc. As I was working through the workshop day I discovered just how much I'd learned about doll making, all the trial and error I'd gone through, and I realized that I had landed on a style which is my own and which I can actually share. It's been exciting.

The more sobering part of the process is that I realize I can't offer this workshop to someone who's never sewn before, since the sewing is tricky and requires curves and darts, something a beginner wouldn't enjoy. I also can't expect everyone to have the tools you need (hemostats, stuffing tools, doll needles). Finally, I can see so many gaps in this process, areas which I haven't seemed to master myself. I know how many times I really screw something up and I just have to make it work by adding some extra feature, or glue! I'm a bit worried about not truly being expert at this. I'm thinking of bringing in my box of mistakes so people know what they're in for. Hopefully, the fiber artists will understand, since it's really just a play date with friends at this point. I'm going to see how it goes and then decide if it's something I can teach others.