This is my idea of a doll. Nice big, substantial body to hold lol. I don't have a name for her yet. I will wait until I paint her and see what character she comes up with. I do love the smaller dolls too. I just haven't seen a nice big one lately.

I wanted a nice round head, so I have been drafting dolls heads in muslin and then sewing them together and stuffing them for the last two days now. I made 5 doll heads lol. Well when I got to this head, I liked it good enough and I decided on the body. The size of the body is measured by the size of the head, so this doll should be about 7 times the lenght of the head. Well it's not going to happen. The head is 5 1/2 inches so the body should be between 38 to 40 inches tall. She looks good at 31 1/2 inches tall, nice.

I really had to jury rig around with this doll as the head was already stuffed and far be it for me to unstuff anything. I did up the body, attached the stuffed legs and arms. Stuffed the body. Then I made a square breast plate? out of muslin and batting, cut a hole in the middle, whipped stitched the head in. Then I ripped open the top part of the body and inserted the head and whipped that into place. Then I sewed down the breast plate firmly. The breast plate came out nice, considering I did it freehand. When I sewed up the sides, it made a nice covering sleeve over the arms.

I will tape her up today and gesso her entire head, forearms and forelegs (is that the correct way to say it?) Well the bottom half of her arms and legs. I have used a brown gell pen to sketch in her features to get a sense of what I want. I like huge eyes.

I will dress her in civil war fabrics and will try not to make her smile too much so she can remain in that catagory of old time dolls. Even though she is new and clean and not a tear on her lol.


Here she is in all her glory. I love her little tummy, oh she has a nice bottom too. I haven't decided if I'm going to paint her shoes on or make them out of suede......