My love of dolls continues

Has been a busy week here with making doll clothes. This is my latest find. She came to me dirty with a really nasty little outfit on and I had to rid her of the dirty and grime. She is an all one piece soft vinyl doll make in Mexico. What year, who knows? The thing is she talks. Says several phases by pulling the string in the back of her head. She cleaned up very well and I made her a cute little pink dress, bloomers and white socks all trimmed in pink lace. The only thing I kept of the original outfit were the white plastic shoes, which were in a like new condition. She is now listed on my website http://www.ejcrafts.com

My love of dolls has gone back to my childhood. I always had a doll and played dolls with my sister all the time. I made doll clothes from the time I was about 8 or 9 when I was allowed to use the sewing machine. Maybe I am in my second childhood because I am starting to get excited again about getting some more dolls, cleaning them up, redressing them and letting others have the joy of getting a "new to them" vintage doll. This is going to be a great adventure!

Dolls and more dolls

I really should stay off EBay because yesterday I won the bids on three different dolls. They were really low bids and I didn't expect to get any of them and I won three. Who knew!

It all started last week when I got the two Chatty Cathy dolls in the mail from a collector. I decided I would go on EBay and see the pricing plus I wanted to buy some shoes for the dolls. Bad idea because I started to bid on some of the dolls that had low pricing figuring that they would go way high....well a couple of them did but then came yesterday and I get the notices that I was high bidder. Now I have three more dolls headed my way and I am really going to have to decide what I want to do with all these dolls.

I did get some clothes made for the dolls this week and it is so much fun making doll clothes. I like pulling the fabric and cutting out a basic dress and then going through all the embellishment's that I have, adding them to the dress and seeing what I come out with.

Here are three of the dresses that I did this week and now with getting some "new" old dolls in the mail over the next week, I guess I will be making more clothes.

If anyone is interested in buying some of these dolls or even the clothing for these dolls, please contact me and I can send the information on the dolls. I will also be putting all the dolls and the clothing on my website over the next week.

Now it is time to go sew some more............

Today my husband John is in love.

I got this fur the other day and John wanted a bear made from it right away. The last couple of days I worked on making a panda and this is the result. He is a 14 inch, 5 way jointed bear and I even put vinyl paw pads on him to make him a "man's" bear.

Even though navy is a hard fur to photograph, I think you can see the shine that this fur has. It is so soft and easy to work with. Anyway, John thinks it looks almost like Chicago Bear colors so he is in love. It is going to be very hard when this bear sells. The bear is now listed on my website.

Wednesday and I am in love.

Today I received two "new to me" Chatty Cathy dolls in the mail. I think I am in love with these dolls. They were popular in the late 60's and early 70's and I remember at the time that we could not afford to buy one for our daughter. Now I have three of them.

The first one I got a couple of months ago and that one is going nowhere but these two I bought for resale. I really wish I could keep them but it is best if I sell them. I will be making a complete wardrobe for each of the dolls. These two are in pretty good shape. One still has the pull string but the voice is garbled and the other one the string is missing. This is a common thing in these dolls. The one also have discolored legs which also is common. These dolls have been around and played with so you have to expect some minor problems. They have both been redressed with new clothes and then I will add some more clothing.

If you know of anyone who would like one of these dolls, please contact me for further information on the dolls.

Maybe tomorrow I will get around to more about my life. As for today, I am off to my sewing room to see what I can do with the new wonderful fur that I got yesterday.
I got some peach and navy and think I will be making a Chicago Bear panda for my hubby. He is a Chicago Bear fan. These will be special ordered if you want one and will not say Chicago Bear anywhere on them as only the colors will make it look like a Chicago Bear. Don't want to get into any copywrite problems.

Reflections

My birthday was last week and as I start another decade of my life, I sit and reflect on where I have been and where my life has led me.

Background: I grew up on a farm with my grandparents raising my sister and I. Our parents were divorced when I was 4 and my mother had us living with her. One day she brought the laundry and us girls and our baby brother to my grandparents and said she would be back in a couple of days and she never returned. My grandparents who had two kids of their own still at home, one girl 16 and a boy 12 couldn't keep all of us so my brother who was only 5 months old was adopted by my grandfather sister and husband. My grandparents then got guardianship of us girls. We had a good life from then on and enjoyed living and working on farms in the northern Illinois area.

I think because of this early trauma, I vowed if I got married, I would never put my children through that. Well, here I am married 52 years and raised three wonderful children so I guess I made it. Yes, being married is not always easy and yes we had our bad times but there were many more good times than bad.

My husband, John and I are best friends and have worked all our lives until we retired 6 years ago. The last few years of working we even worked in the same job so were together 24/7 so when we retired we didn't have that trauma of all of a sudden being together all the time.

We even spent 20 years of doing craft shows all over the western states. We really enjoyed doing them with John setting up everything and I doing all the sewing. It worked great. We would work all week at regular jobs and our weekend were craft shows. We still do a couple of shows a year but due to health problems, that is all that we can manage. Then John doesn't drive anymore so now the shows are all local.

I love doing my crafts and I love to sew so now with a website I am able to sell some of my work that way too. I try to keep my cost low and I don't charge what I know I should charge for my work but it is more of "keeping busy" so as long as I can make enough to cover my costs of materials and a little extra to cover the shows, I am happy.

I have rambled on now and never got to the part of reflection that I started this blog with so tomorrow is another day. I have lots of time, so if I get busy doing something else I will write and explore what my life has given me.

Green is good

Green is good, right?

For these pretty little fairy dolls, yes.

Now the story of why these dolls came out a moss green color. Polyester fabric is not suppose to take dye but I have done it before and it worked. I made a bright blue and orange bear from a lovely white faux fur this past winter to match the Chicago bear colors. The fur colors turned out beautifully and the guy who commissioned it was thrilled.

So on with the story of the green. I have the light taupe colored ultra suede and I thought I could dye that a nice brown to make some brown dolls. I got out my big stainless steel stock pot and mixed the dye according to the package and put it on the stove to boil. I added about a yard of fabric and waited, stirring the fabric every so often. For an hour and nothing was happening, another hour and it looked like maybe the fabric was getting brown. Another hour and now it looks brown so I do the next step of washing the excess dye from the fabric with cold water. The fabric does look like it is really the brown color I was going after, so into the dryer the fabric goes. Twenty minutes later, the fabric is soft and the color looks right.....yea I did it. WRONG!

I put the fabric on my cutting table that is in front of a south window and OH NO....the fabric is mossy green.

Now what am I going to do. I have fabric dyed and I am not a person who likes to waste fabric so I cut out two dolls and made them up. Okay, so now I have two green dolls....let's see.....what kind of things are green......gnomes, sprites, fairies..........hummmmm what to do, what to do.

First they need hair so start to pull faux fur fabric to see what would look best. Tried several colors and none were quite right and then tried the white and it worked as it is a complete contrast to the fabric. Okay now that that is done, what about clothing. Maybe a Christmas theme outfit but no Christmas theme doesn't sell well for me so onto the next thing. Fancy, that will do it! So pull out all my bridal type fabrics. White, blue, lavender, green, pink, rose what oh what is the best ones to use.........

White on white satin is always good so start there. Cut that out and decided it really needed puffy sleeves in a different fabric so cut out some sheer sleeves. Hum, better cut out two sets of sleeves because these would look good on both dolls. Start to sew and opened several drawers of lace to find just the right lace to put on the dress. Sewed it all up and dressed the doll. Looks good. Now what color for the other doll? Had a small piece of a heavy rose fabric and cut that out, sewed and dug through all the lace again to find a piece that would work on that fabric. Done and now both dolls are dressed.

Set the dolls on stands and go........what do I need to finish them. Flowers for their hair, but I don't have any flowers that would work. Shoot, now I have to make a trip to WalMart and it is 110 degrees outside and I really don't want to go out.

Next morning now and I have to go get some flowers if I want to finish these dolls so off to WalMart. Get to store and they really don't have much to choose from and they are expensive but found a couple branches of a velvety flower that would work. Also bought wire and floral tape and extra ribbon. Home again and see what if the idea I have in my head will work. Got the wire the right size and used floral tape to cover the wire and started to try to get the flowers on the wire. Nope........doesn't look good. Darn! Walk away and think of something else I can do.

Second idea. Hot glue. Dug out the hot glue gun and heat that up and cut the flowers down and now have to cover the wire with more than floral tape or the hot glue will melt the tape. Cover the wire now with ribbon. Finally I can start to cover the head piece with leaves and flowers. After a couple of hours of work, two head pieces are done and I attach some ribbons for streams and put the head pieces on the dolls.

Dolls still don't look finished....Now what???? Baskets of flowers in their hands. Nope. Wands in the hands. Nope. Okay, dig through the accessory box and see what else I have. Lockets....I have some little antique looking lockets in there. These will work!

Finally after days of going back and forth on this project I think I have a couple of cute dolls. Now they are on my website and we will see if anyone else thinks they are cute and will buy them.

New Doll Designs

It has been since May when I last was here and I am not sure anyone is reading this anyway.

Here are a couple of the new designs that I have been working on. The first is a set of dolls I call Kyle and Katie. They are 16 inch dolls. I like this design and they have been good seller for me this year. I am down to just the three sets.

The second picture is of my design I just finished up this week. She is a 17 inch doll with bent arms and legs. It took me third times to get her right but I am pleased with the finished product.

The weather is hot here but then it always is in the summer in the desert. No craft shows to do in the area and everyone pretty much just stays in the house and only goes out to do what is necessary. We all look forward to the end of the summer when we can get out and do things again.

I hope everyone is having a great summer and the storms have stayed away from you.