Stick Doll Play Day

Some members of the Austin Fiber Artists got together yesterday to play with fabric. We try to do this every other month or so. Yesterday I got to plan our play day, so of course I chose to make a stick doll. Yesterday was interesting because I've always wondered if it would be fun to teach doll making. Turns out it was! And the results were fabulous, as you can see!

I posted more play day pictures on flicker under stick dolls. Check them out here, if you like.

I learned a lot, too:

About teaching:
1. People really appreciate a supply list so that they can bring their own stuff.
2. Needle sculpting is not as "intuitive" as I thought. I need to come up with an established formula for sculpting and/or provide a stuffed ball to practice on.
3. Everyone comes to a project with different expectations and ideas. (You'd think that would have been obvious to me!)
4. Some people want to buy supplies they use and are introduced to in a class, especially supplies they haven't used in the past, or those commonly used in their particular area of expertise. For example some fabric dyers wanted hemostats, and one doll maker wanted practically every tool I had brought.
5. If we'd have had 8 hours we could have done all the embellishing we needed to finish our dolls.

About doll making:
1. Eyes:
a. Close-set eyes make the nose bunchy when you needle sculpt it. Allow for extra space between the eyes.
b. To lessen the bulgy effect of the eyes, do not run the same thread through the eye and the eye socket. This will also help with directing the eye placement so the doll is not cross-eyed or wall-eyed.
c. Painted eyelashes look great with my eye beads (thanks, Diane!)
2. I'm inspired to try some different noses that the ones I usually make. A lot of people didn't like their noses, but I loved all the new shapes I saw!
3. Mary brought a pre-dyed green piece of Rayon and Jean brought a pre-dyed orange piece of bamboo to use. Their dolls turned out wonderful...I must try different materials and colors!

Anyway, the above stuff is meaningless to most people, so sorry, but I'm just really excited to try some new things. I thought I was tired when I left the play day, but I ended up going home and playing some more with my doll. I repositioned the eyelids and finished embellishing her. I thought it was going to be a guy doll, but no! As soon as I started painting the face I saw this very cute bookish lady peering out. I'll post her picture later on.

The ladies who came out to play were wonderful, all. Helpful with ideas, friendly, focused, and eager to make something new. They were all cool with the doll they made. I think they are all fabulous -- and their dolls, too.

It's all good. We increased the doll population on the planet in six short hours.

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.