April Dolls

I'm a bit behind schedule with my April dolls, Daisy and Darren. But I am working on both the April dolls and the May dolls at the same time so that by the end of May I hope to have four dolls completed.
Here is some of the work in progress.

Beginning to paint faces.

I'm no artist so painting the faces has been one of the challenges however I think I improve with each new batch that I paint. I'm beginning to understand how to create the shaping through use of light and dark colour. I'm pleased with this latest selection. It was not possible to paint on the brown fabric so to create the brown faces I had to start on the pink fabric and build up the colour.

I've also been working on the hands using pipe cleaners to shape them. Here are some close up pictures.

New Fabric

When I was making the first six dolls, I used   medium-weight calico for the bodies.
For Alex and Anya, I painted just their faces however for Blake, Briony, Carole and Crispin I tried painting all the body pieces to get a flesh colour. This was time consuming and it was difficult to get a consistent colour.So I started looking for some suitable flesh coloured fabric. My local Fabric Shop didn't have anything that would do. Then I came across Pelenna Patchworks, online. They sent me some samples and I chose FLESH and CONKER.

The fabric is perfect, very strong, doesn't fray easily, so good for narrow seams and firm stuffing.I've got my eye on some other colours so I can make dolls with a range of skin colours.




Here are all the pieces cut out for one doll.

More Carole and Crispin

Here are the details on Carole's jeans with embroidered flowers and tiny buttons. I've also given Carole toes as I plan to make open sandals for her.






With these dolls I also tried something new with their hands.

I made a little hand skeleton out of pipe cleaners and inserted it into their hands and just lightly stuffed the palm of the hand. This has made their hands more flexible and realistic.

Some more pictures of my favourite Carole.