I Make Dolls

I am in the mood to make dolls and when I read a blog I posted a couple of years ago, I became even more inspired.  I thought I would repost this for you to read.

I make dolls.  I have made dolls for over 30 years.  But I never really considered myself a doll maker until recently.  I usually made dolls to do other crafts. 

Since I am a fiber artist, most of the dolls I make are cloth dolls.  Cloth or rag dolls (often called that because they were made and stuffed with rags) have been around for thousands of years.  The earliest one knon is about 1700 years old.  It was found in a grave from Ancient Rome and was made of linen.  There are not many cloth dolls around because they were literally loved to pieces,

My doll making actually started with teddy bears.  I found a wonderful pattern and began making bears for gifts and for charity.  I gave dozens to homeless and abused women shelters for the children staying there

I then found a pattern for little felt bears.  Felt was wonderful to use because it doesn’t fray.  The fun part of these bears was you could dress them in various outfits.  I made a lot of these as gifts creating outfits to fit the recipients’ personality.

 

I think my first doll was from a fabric panel.  Panels often have all the parts of a doll or animal printed on the fabric including the instructions. You just cut them out and sew them up.  What I liked about this doll was more the embroidery than the doll.  At the time the doll was just to show off the embroidery I did.

 Even though I had made a doll, I still didn’t consider myself a doll maker.  Then one Christmas break while visiting my mother in Wisconsin, she found a class at a local quilt shop that we could take.  Taking a class together was something we always wanted to do but usually by the time I would get to her house for the holidays, there weren’t any classes available. The class was to make an Angel doll.  Mom collected angels so this was perfect for her.

 

Then around 2000 I was reading a book on creativity and there was an exercise called the Creativity doll.  The idea was to create a doll that represented something you wanted in your life: love, marriage, increased income, etc.  Think of it as putting a wish into a 3 dimensional form.  I wanted to be more of a free spirit so I made the doll following a pattern but her outfit was designed as I went along.

 

 I then began reading up on dolls: creativity dolls, healing dolls, dolls children could make and began to make more and more dolls  I finally called myself a doll maker  But still my dolls represent different types of fiber techniques.

I have made a doll using colored pencil on fabric.  

 

I have made woven dolls.  This was actually a challenge from my Fiber Artist group.  We had to create something using the bead and the fiber I used as the hair.  The sequins were actually part of the yarn.

 I have done dolls in punchneedle embroidery.

And my latest was the embellished doll I did during my birthday creativity retreat last year.

Dolls remind me of my childhood and all the play involved with dolls.  I still feel I am playing when I make dolls.  But doll making also inspires my creativity and imagination. It’s a challenge to see what type of artistic technique I can use with a doll and that then leads me to use that technique elsewhere.

You don’t have to consider yourself a doll maker to create a doll.  I didn’t for a long time. But some time when you are stuck for what to create or you just want to play try making a doll.  And, hey guys, no one says you can’t make dolls.

©2018, 2021- Cheryl E. Fillion