Different Doll Sewing

In that, in addition to sewing the doll's clothes, I also sewed the doll's body.

Years ago, someone (I feel bad that I can't remember who) sent me a set of craft doll head, hands, and feet, made of vinyl and meant to be attached to a cloth body.  They went into one of the doll parts boxes, figuring I'd eventually find a plastic body for the head (which a very cursory examination showed was cast from a head that very probably was originally on a plastic body, with an extra flanged neck part added.  The original doll had more hair, too.)

A month or so ago, I decided I should go ahead and make a cloth body for the body, as intended (well...intended by the craft component company who copied whatever doll the head was originally from.)  I thought I'd use one of the body patterns from NunoDoll, but the prospect of resizing and printing one did not appeal.  I eventually remembered that I'd thrifted Simplicity 6006, a Holly Hobbie doll pattern

And when I checked, it looked like it would be a good size to go with the craft doll parts.

And then I let that sit for a few weeks before finally semi-arbitrarily choosing a fabric (scraps left over from a recent skirt) and cutting the body parts out late Saturday night.  I cut off the hands and feet to work with the vinyl parts.

I sewed the body together, folding the edges inside to make channels for string to tie on the appendages, stuffed the pieces (after buying a bag of Poly-fil first thing Sunday morning from Walmart.  I can't remember the last time my stuffing purchase wasn't an open bag from a thrift store.) and tied on those appendages. I hand sewed the legs to the body (if I make this doll body again, they're getting sewn into the torso when it's assembled) and attached the arms with button joints (again, if I make this in the future, those're getting sewn into the torso, too.)

 

I took the path of least resistance and used the Holly Hobbie pattern dress and pinafore patterns to make the clothes.  I added some extra details, as per my usual kinds of doll sewing.

The bloomers pattern piece was missing, but it's easy enough to cut bloomers without a pattern, especially for a doll who can't complain if the fit feels funny.

The shoes as given would have been far too large, but the doll foot sole pattern piece was about the same size as the vinyl foot soles, and it looked like the original shoe pattern minus the seam allowance would have been the right size to fit onto that smaller sole pattern piece.  Did it actually work out that easily?  For the answer, consider that I am not showing any close up images of the shoes. 

The small floral and the chintz were also gifts, and I'd wanted to combine them for years.  This project used just about all of them, so that was nice, too.  I bought the basket weave print ages ago for doll clothes and surprised myself when I was looking for a third print to use and it seemed like the best option--I was looking for something else with at least a little yellow or orange in it, to try to tie things to her hair.  I'm not fond of yellow, so my choices were extremely limited.  I don't think I ever would have picked it if I didn't have a color limit, but I think it works well.

(And, yes, I'm not happy with the doll's hair overall--even if it were a different color, it's still cut very badly.  I don't have any wigs on hand that would fit this head, and, for many reasons, I am not rerooting this head.  So.  The yellow stays.)

This is definitely not my usual kind of Doll Thing, but it is finished.