15 February 2009

Dolls--Waldorf and others

This is Anime Annie. She is my very first doll pattern, and she is made like a Raggedy Ann style doll, but with a shaped bottom for sitting, and set in 'shoe style' feet. Her legs and arms are much longer than a regular Annie doll, much more like the Anime Characters my daughters both love. I may offer her as a freebie pattern on FOCD, if I can figure out how to create a pattern pdf.
















This is my very first Waldorf-inspired doll--Jessie May. She is made from the 12" Friendship dolls pattern, from Dancing Rain Dolls. Her hair is wigged on a crocheted wig, with fibres that are (well) a mystery. She isn't stuffed with wool, or made with organic jersey knit like a traditional Waldorf doll, but I still love her. She is just so cute!

Her older sister, nicknamed Peanut Butter Cup for her hair, is still waiting for her introduction pictures. She is made from the 16" Dancing Rain Dolls friendship doll pattern, with medium brown wool hair and 'lighter coloured' highlights. The combination looks remarkably like peanut butter cups.

I prefer the 16" doll. I like the overall shape, and feel better than the 12" doll, but there were 'challenges' with the 16" body pattern in the down load. The lower body pattern did not match the upper body by more than 3/4" across. Being inventive, I enlarged with lower body page to 114% to get it to match. There are also no vertical 'match here' marks on the body pieces in the 16" doll pattern; I guestimated where the pieces should match, but I could be wrong. Although I love the pattern, particularly since it includes a wide variety of clothing that fits the doll, the pattern challenges for the body will cause troubles for a less experienced seamstress or doll maker. I did contact the maker, but I received no response after a week. She has a reputation for excellent service, so maybe I got her on a bad week, or on a vacation week.

Overall, her instructions are excellent. Some of the pictures are very close up, particularly for the nose directions. I found, as a new doll maker, I needed the information found on a couple of blogs to sort out some of the head information. All her patterns, including her clothing patterns, are template patterns. You need to add seam allowances, or be willing to sew on the line. This isn't a problem in any way, as it means that everyone can sew with their preferred seam allowances. The patterns include a very large variety of clothing patterns for the doll. For the money, even with the body pattern challenge, I would highly recommend these patterns.

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