Since Lirael said she's okay with me abusing her thread for showing my rag doll too and even kindly changed the title already, well, here it is...
*takes a deep breath*
May I introduce to you... Miss Ugly, the ugliest rag doll ever.
Boy, I don't even know where to start. The beginning might be a good start, huh? Alright now. So, I had this crazy idea to make Seekers rag dolls so I devised a template of my own. I gathered some of the shape from peeking at my Monster High rag doll and at Lirael's doll and mostly followed Lirael's order of assembly. The doll was supposed to become Giselda.
When I sewed the first arm the sewing machine coughed up oil on the lower thread which then slightly stained her left hand from the inside. I pondered about remaking it but decided against it as surely this prototype would not become perfect anyway. Little did I know...
When I tried to tuck the arms and legs in like Lirael did it became a mess. The body was so small it didn't all fit right and after sewing one arm and one leg had very weird angles and the other arm was sewn in the wrong way around altogether! So I opened it up and from there on sewed it all by hand as my sewing machine just didn't work out for this. Sadly the needle stitches on her arm don't close anymore so the doll keeps that dotted line.
At that point I had long decided that she'd become a generic elf character instead of Giselda. Having an ugly prototype Giselda doll would have made me just as unhappy as having two Giselda dolls and preferring one of them. And I just can't throw anything away, especially not a doll or anything with eyes. If I do it haunts me for months or even years.
After fastening the arms and legs again I stuffed the body, then sewed the head on in a very... err... experimental way when I noticed that I should have done that before. After stuffing the head she had awful hamster cheeks - and I mean TRULY awful OVEREATEN hamster cheeks! So I removed the stuffing from the head, turned it, sewed the cheeks better and redid the stuffing after embroidering the face. Then I closed the head and added 3 layers of hair which I made like in Lirael's photos.
Well, next thing I did was to cut a hole into her head to stuff a piece of pipe cleaner down her throat because her head snapped backwards from the weight of her hair. *headdesk*
When that was fixed I went upstairs, made her a dress, threw it away because it was awful, then used golden fabric to sew on a dress. That's when I noticed how awfully low her arms sit! That's an anatomic nightmare! And the reason why she couldn't wear a decent dress. I sewed on some organza which I love because it's fluffy and which I utterly hate because it frays terribly and I can't seam it. Therefore I had to fold it to this toga-shape. At this point I truly hated this doll so I used the cheap plastic beads from a tinker set for little girls to adorn her clothes. She was supposed to become aquatic themed but it all just doesn't match. So the only thing aquatic is the little starfish in her hair.
Now she's done and sits in the back of my shelf where hopefully I won't have to see her often. ^^
She's terrible. Her face sits way too low high up, her mouth is sloped, the pencil lines for the right eye weren't correct and now don't go away, the skin fabric is so thin that pencil lines and the ends of the embroidery threads shine through, she had a lobotomy to add that pipe cleaner and her clothes are terrible.
Still, at least I learned a lot. I'm quite sure the next pattern will work much better and hopefully my first Seekers project will turn out better.
Some of the changes:
- The arms will either be part of the body or be sewn to the body first and to each other later when the body gets sewn - thus they won't need to be tucked in. Hey, in that case I could add a pipe cleaner for posability to them too.
- The head shape will be better.
- The lower part of the body will be rectangular, not a triangle. So the legs won't point in funny directions.
- The ears, thumbs and heels will be more accentuated.
- Instead of embroidery I'll try to use needle felting to make the face or use pastel pens like they do in "proper" cloth doll making.
My next project will be Cato. If it works out I'll start a new thread with a step-by-step tutorial for making her - if it doesn't you'll find a random medium-skinned rag doll here soonish. ^^;