I Found a Box Full of Body Parts....

....and now I'm feeling very guilty. While attempting to sort our my work space, I discovered some little people I had  begun years ago, which I had completely forgotten about.


Some of these were made quite a few years ago, for the market scene and the first big project I began, the artist's studio. As well, there are two dolls intended for a park bench vignette; a pregnant mom and her toddler. There was also an elderly lady who was going to share the bench with them - they were supposed to be at a bus stop - but the old lady ended up as one of the shoppers in the market.

So now, aside from at least two more dolls for the Tudor market, I also have two or three left for the other market. The baby had movable arms, but I managed to break the shoulder joint. I guess I just put them out of sight, out of mind.

While trying to cut down on my enormous hobby stash, I also found two dolls I had forgotten about, larger size; one is a reproduction china head, the other a Chinese baby with a broken hand and in need of some new joint elastic. This is on top of a couple of practice restorations on two antiques, an Armand Marseille child and a china head Highland Mary, that I acquired very inexpensively a couple of weeks ago.

When I say to my friends that I need to live to be 150, in order to finish all my projects, I am now underestimating!

I will get back to minis soon....

Well, Three New People Are Done

The dress for my Tudor Merchant lady worked by backing the fabric with iron-on interfacing and then gluing the tiny top and bottom seams, but it took more time than planned. She is ready to go to the Leisure Expo on Saturday:

Her purse is being worn by the friar I dressed some time ago, so I will have to make her a new one. Just the top part of her outfit consisted of 10 separate pieces! Her teeny cap has a very tiny hand-sewn hem all around it. She looks a bit goggle-eyed in the photo, must be the angle at which I took the picture.

This is the Tudor labourer; he has a blond Dutch-boy haircut and a sweeping blond mustache. I quite like the way he turned out. His jerkin is fine brown glove leather (from a gauntlet glove that had lost its partner), as are his boots, which have a suede turn-up. He wears a raggedy red scarf and a light brown knit cap. Not so gormless now, thanks to the mustachios!

The dress for the Tudor lady has been cut out and fray-checked, but I am too tired to do any more this evening. The other Tudor merchant's wife has as many complicate pieces to her bodice as the lady above, so she will also have to wait a few weeks. Both ladies are now wearing shoes, though.

I've been using patterns provided by Dollshouse and Miniature Scene magazine, and the lady's dress I cut is from Sue Heaser's book on making polymer clay dolls. Patterns were made by Sue Harrington and Louise Goldsboro, I believe, although I have altered some of their ideas.

That's it: I am going to relax, pack up the rest of the Tudor Market (you wouldn't believe the amount of dust inside of that), and allow the TV to lull me to sleep.

Progress on Market Hall People

Well, I had hoped for more progress, but we are getting there; from left to right, a Tudor Merchant's wife, she is in underwear, socks, and the modesty piece of her dress. Her dress has some complicated bits, and I am trying to simplify it a little. The original was wool, and she is just too small for a wool dress, so I have to find something that looks like wool but is quite thin. I think I may cheat a little and back the pieces for her bodice with iron-on interfacing, which will make it possible to glue the hems on her bodice rather than try to sew them.

 Next, a Tudor labourer, he is half dressed, waiting to have his sleeves sewn in, his jerkin and kerchief added, and then his boots and hat, once he has hair. I am kind of tempted to try a beard on this one, he looks quite gormless right now. Also, the poor dear lost the rim of his left ear when I put his shirt on, so I have to do some ear surgery - with super-glue!

Then we have the wealthy lady; she is the least dressed of the lot, only has socks and drawers at this point. She needs a rather more elaborate gown, so I have to come up with some fabric choices.

 The Tudor merchant lady is next, she  needs her over-bodice, sleeves, head-dress and hair and she is done. She will wear a belt and purse over her skirt and apron, and I have a lovely one that was a tidbit at Camp MiniHaHa the Year of the Castle.

Last is yesterday's lady, now complete. I wish her lovely skirt was more visible! Before I wear out completely, I will give the semi-dressed ones the uppers of their shoes and boots, and perhaps give the wealthy lady a petticoat so she won't have to be embarrassed.

They may  not all be ready for exhibition on Saturday, but I hope to have at least three of them ready to go, and I do have a sense of some progress!

One and a Half Dressed Ladies

They've been sitting in this box for quite a long time, waiting for me to dress and wig them. So long, in fact, that the elastic bands holding their labels in place rotted. I thought it was just 4 ladies, but there is also a sturdy young man among them.

So here is the first lady; she is a Tudor market woman from the country, so her dress is quite simple and made from homespun and home-dyed fabrics. She is auditioning wigging material, while she waits for her leather waistcoat side seams to dry. I decided the dark brown hair suited her best. 

All done; the most difficult part of her outfit was her hat, which required teeny seams all along the edges and then had to be tied on the top of her head! She has dark hair in a side part, with one side peeking out from beneath the head-dress; her skirt is madder red, her waistcoat is light brown leather laced in golden yellow, and she has brown stockings and shoes. Sorry for the rather dark exposure, I took the photo after the sun went down and the flash didn't do a very good job.

I only got half-way with the second lady; she has her undergarments, one of which is her rust petticoat, with her green skirt kilted up at the side to show off the petticoat. Her stockings are white, and her shoes are black. She needs her upper bodice and sleeves, apron, cap and wig. However, I am too tired to do more fiddly sewing today.

Don't they look weird without their wigs? The ladies don't have ears, unlike the men, as their ears don't show under their hair; besides, ears are also quite fiddly!

I hope to finish dressing her tomorrow and perhaps start on the stockings, shoes and underclothes of the next one tomorrow, with hopefully two more to be finished on Friday. That way there will be some ladies populating the Tudor Market and keeping an eye out on the children....

Sewing for Male Miniature Dolls

There was some discussion on The Camp, an international miniaturists' group on the internet that I am a member of, regarding sewing for male dolls. I remembered these two, made in the year 2000, which never sold and are still living with me. Both of these dolls were dressed using the patterns and instructions in Sue Atkinson's book, Making & Dressing Dolls' House Dolls in 1/12 Scale; this is pretty much the best book I've come across, so far!

These are Grandmere, who is a widow in light mourning, and her butler, Chadwick. Both dolls are one of a kind (OOAK), made of polymer clay. Grandmere has a natural mohair wig, gentle silvery curls with a coronet of braids, under her day cap. Chadwick has a wig made of commercial wigging fibres, blended for a little bit of colour variation. And yes, he stands completely on his own, and his tray can be removed - I tend to make my doll's hands so they can "hold" things.

Their clothing is largely assembled on a sewing machine, with the final "fitting" done by hand with tiny stitches. Grandmere's dress trim is glued on, while the only gluing on Chadwick's costume are the buttons (made of polymer clay) on his waistcoat and shirt front. Although these dolls were made 15 years ago, there has, so far, been no yellowing of the glue (Aleene's Tacky Glue).

Grandmere refused to stand on her own today, so she is posed inside a silver napkin ring, just visible at her dress hem. Her petticoat and bloomers are made of white batiste, lace-trimmed with embroidery-floss ribbon beading, and a tiny bullion-stitch rose on the petticoat front. The lace trim came from a shop in Boothbay Harbor, ME that has since closed; they sold the most wonderful tiny French and Swiss laces, and my supply is getting very low.

Slightly blurred photo of Grandmere, minus her day cap, showing her hairdo.

And Chadwick, also slightly out of focus; I can't access the macro setting on my camera, guess it's time to study the user's guide again! I have to admit that I've developed a block with making dolls, but I keep on trying (and squashing my failures!). In the meantime, on with foods and the like, one of these days my doll-making mojo just has to come back.

Introducing Big John

Big John is in his late teens. His parents run the inn (no, I am not likely to make an inn!), so Big John serves the fast food at the Tudor market; ale and meat pies. He is a little shy, because the girls tease him as he blushes so very easily. He is quite the catch, inns are always good for making money; however, his parents affianced him years ago to the second daughter of the innkeeper in the next village. She will be ready trained to work  the inn, will be able to brew a good ale, and be a good help-meet for Big John and his parents, as they get elderly. In between, she will cook, clean, have babies, weave, spin, sew - life for women in this period was no picnic!

Big John dearly wants to grow a beard and mustache, but his facial hair is so sparse that right now, it would be kind of a joke. He is big for his age, hence his name; if he lived in the 21st century, he would be a football halfback. In the Tudor era, however, his very size makes patrons of the inn most unlikely to get rowdy....

Big John's costume is a Sue Harrington design, from an old issue of the Dolls House Magazine; a mini friend sent me some photocopies of Tudor costuming to use for my Tudor dolls. His belt buckle is a doll's shoe buckle I purchased a dozen of many years ago; a bit big for a Tudor, but maybe he is very proud of the thing! He is holding a leather ale jack in one hand, and a pasty or meat pie in the other; whether it's for himself or for a customer, I really don't know....

Please Meet...Brother Theobald

Well, that went a little faster than expected. This is the Tudor monk, Brother Theobald. He is the infirmarian for the local monastery, and is going to the market to buy non-local herbs and imported medicinal plants for his work in the monastery sick-room. (I kind of ripped off Brother Cadfael!)

He is wearing a dark brown, homespun habit. The rope belt, with its three knots signifying the monk's promises of obedience, chastity and poverty, is new and white. He is wearing leather sandals with a chamois leather insole, brown garment leather straps, and a sole and heels of rough suede from an old elbow patch. You can get an awful lot of soles out of one single elbow patch! The suede helps the miniature monk to stand. He has his scrip over his shoulder, but has left his gathering basket with the inn keep, in order to have his hands free to check through the "foreign" medicaments.

Monastery infirmarians, besides looking after the health of the monks, were also used by the local people as physicians and apothecaries, especially the very poor who could not afford to purchase medicines or hire the services of a so-called doctor. Brother Theobald has a pudding bowl haircut, with a palm-sized tonsure on his crown. When I was a child in The Netherlands, priests still kept the tonsure, although they were no bigger than a silver dollar by that point. I don't believe religious orders use them any more, though.

His little suede shoulder bag was a Camp MiniHaHa tidbit in the Year of the Castle Room Box, finally put to good use! The monk's robe and cowl (which I lined for tidiness) were designed by Sue Harrington, for Dolls House World Magazine. As it was a photocopy from a friend, I don't know the date or issue number. His hair is silver grey viscose.

That leaves 2 additional men and 4 ladies....

Zombies No Longer

It is amazing what a little bit of paint will do, now they no longer look like zombies. I still have to adjust the whites of their eyes a little, once the current paint dries, and then add gloss varnish on the eyes and the mouths. Using gloss not only seals the paint, but makes the eyes "alive".

They are wearing their labels around their middles, so I can keep track of who is supposed to be what character. You may notice the 3 men all have ears, while the 4 ladies don't. Because the ladies will wear complete, Tudor-era head-coverings as well as lots of hair, ears would just get in the way. The men, however, will likely have their ears showing, so they get them applied.

Next up, drawers for the monk, and sandals on his bare feet. The ladies will get shoes, stockings and pantaloons (not in period, but people will turn dolls upside-down!) The other two men will get shoes or boots, stockings, and trunk hose. Those are the easy parts; the hard part will be the clothing itself; only the monk has "simple" clothing. The biggest of the men gets boots and a leather jerkin; that should be fun, as I haven't tried gluing tiny seams on leather. I may resort to sewing for that, if I can find my leather needle. If I get enough done, I will add another photo this evening; if not, you will have to wait until tomorrow.

I used paper clay to fill the crack in my monk's breastplate, and with a touch of paint that break is nicely masked. My fancy Tudor lady's neck break is near invisible; I stuck a portion of toothpick up into the head, and left some below the breast plate, for added strength. The protruding portion was then jammed into the felt body and glued into place. The broken ear is invisibly repaired, nicely hidden by hair.

As I was enjoying a sense of accomplishment last evening, my younger daughter deposited a bag of body parts on my lap: "Mom, I just don't have the time, would you like to assemble, wig and dress the people for my Darling family/Peter Pan house?" What can a retired mother do, except agree to try and find the time.....

My daughter used Sue Heaser's book, Making Miniature Dolls With Polymer Clay, to sculpt these figures, quite a few years ago. Some of these dolls, if not all, will have jointed legs that should be able to sit; so here are Wendy, Michael and John, Peter Pan and Mr. and Mrs. Darling. It was her first attempt at polymer clay sculpting, that book is very good for beginning dolls' house doll makers.
However, this lot are going at the end of the queue; I will share their house with you in another post, as it is under radical reconstruction currently. We are awaiting doors and windows for it right now.
This is not one of my projects; it is a joint project between my Carpenter-in-Chief and my younger daughter for which I am only required (yeah, sure!) for input from experience....

Blank-Eyed Zombies or The People of the Tudor Market in Progress

Right now I am quite gluey, so I hope I won't get tacky glue all over the keyboard. The power stayed on, but we did get 10" or 25 cm of snow overnight; my poor Carpenter-in-Chief has partially cleared the driveway, enough so that our daughter could get out to work. Unfortunately, shops here have Sunday opening hours from 12 to 6 p.m.

An overview of my work area; four ladies' bodies, one set of recycled Tudor clothing, and three men with bodies, in a box. I am still not entirely satisfied with the lady body, my feeling is the torso is too long for the legs; perhaps I should make my next set of ladies' lower legs somewhat longer. To this point, the bodies have been sewn on the sewing machine, but from here it is glue and hand-sewing. I hope you are interested, a little at least, in the process.

To make sure that the legs are even and the body is balanced, I test it for stability. It is not stuffed at all at this point, just the pipe cleaner leg skeletons pushed into the felt body. If everything works, it's on to gluing the bottoms of the felt legs to the polymer clay legs, and sewing up the lower cm or so.
Then the legs are stuffed lightly, followed by the body; at this point, I hand-sew the centre back seams.

Here you can see the pipe cleaner arm armature being sewn and glued to the felt that goes across the shoulders. Her head and body stand ready for arms. More gluing and hand-sewing, then the arm piece is balanced across the body piece, and the shoulder seams are hand-sewn across. Following that, the head with the chest plate is glued onto the felt body, and held in place overnight with elastic to make sure everything holds together.

A box full of miniature zombies! The men are already glued up, while the ladies are elasticated until the morning. Then I get to paint faces. Right now, they are all rather creepy....

The pipe cleaner armature allows me to position the arms. The legs can't really bend enough to "sit" the miniature people properly; they can only sit with their legs straight out in front of them. In order for them to sit convincingly on a chair, you have to give them flattened polymer clay bottoms and shape the legs to whatever seat they will be placed on, i.e., the upper pipe cleaner legs would go to the edge of the seat, while the lower polymer clay legs would have to touch the floor. That means they can't do anything other than sit, of course, as there would be some distortion of the skeleton. (Can you see the snow outside the window?)

These bodies are from the Sue Atkinson book, Making and Dressing Dolls' House Dolls in 1/12 Scale, published by David & Charles. For clothing patterns, it is by far the best book on the market. Most of the garments are lined, meaning there are no raw edges. Where it isn't possible to make proper hems or line items, pieces are bonded with iron-on interfacing. Most of the dolls on this blog were dressed with patterns adapted from this book; the Tudors, however, are being dressed from a variety of sources, found in British miniature magazines, as the book starts with Georgian fashions, which is too late for my Tudor era people.

Once the faces are painted, the little zombies will look rather more human....

Welcome to the new people who chose to follow this blog in the last day or so. I hope you enjoy my miniature efforts. Please write or comment as you wish; I love to hear from people and always hope to learn something new as I muddle along with my miniature world.

The Tudor Merchant Is Ready to Leave the House

The Tudor Merchant is dressed and ready to go; he has borrowed a hat, as his own is not yet ready. His hair, beard and mustache are gray, with some darker strands in the beard, as beards usually stay darker than head hair.

His own hat will be similar, but a colour to match his clothing. He has male-pattern baldness; his temples have definitely receded!

My flash photos are all rather grainy, unfortunately. I am quite pleased with how he turned out. Now there are only 7 more Tudor era people to go, not to mention the others I haven't given bodies, faces, wigs and clothing yet....

Interlude - Dressing the Tudor Merchant

"This is what I have been forced to look like for at least two years; it is high time my dignity was clothed appropriately, don't you think?

"Well, that is somewhat better; I now have some cuffs, a collar, and a pair of sleeves. Keep going, please!

"Now that's more like it, rather suits my obvious dignity . My doublet has skirts, I am wearing a belt, and my money pouch is present. I wish to go to the market, therefore I will need a gown, a hat, and a stick. Think you might be able to keep on going, mistress?"

Well, he had sat around for a very long time. He will get his other clothing soon, plus a head of hair and a beard. The patterns for this clothing have very little in the way of seam allowance, and the working order is very different from what I am used to. There are still 7 more adults to dress for the Tudor market scene, perhaps I will get nice and sticky and give those poor souls at least a body and face this weekend (lots of tacky glue involved in making bodies!). There is at least one woman's outfit ready to be fitted, as Margery from the between-the-wars market (see early posts) started out as a Tudor cook....

The Japanese vignette has to wait until Monday, as I need to go into town and a car is not always available. As I also need to visit the library and the bank, I'll do several things at once after the weekend. Perhaps I can get some adults into the Tudor market scene to control the children and the animals, in the meantime.

What A Beautiful Chinese Doll!

Last year in June I taught a one-day class in Nova Scotia on polymer clay doll sculpting. One of the students, Sheena McC., had a Chinese setting but hadn't been able to find a Chinese lady doll anywhere. She sculpted one in the class (photos back in June of 2013), but found it to be too masculine. She sculpted another doll, and this is the result. Isn't she just gorgeous?

Sheena had an art background, which may have helped her in creating this beauty, but this is just the second time she had worked in polymer clay! I just love this little personage, and the costume Sheena made for her is absolutely beautiful, delicate brocade and velvet. This lovely tiny lady was one of the display items at the CFB Shearwater Hobby Show two weekends ago. I am very glad that Sheena allowed me to share her creation on this blog. Hopefully I will get to see her in her setting some day.

Mini Day Out and the Miniature Doll-Making Class

 Half of the room, industriously working on the bodies for their miniature people, who were mostly in the oven at this point....

Other half of the room, the rain had finally ceased and there was a sort of view out the window.

Some of the miniature people, some with bodies, some without, none of them painted as yet.

 Short, tall, chubby, slender, beautiful, homely - another look at the little people. The well-endowed lady is an elderly witch. The lady at top right even has her face painted!

We even had a bathing beauty, who will be in a bubble bath. And those long limbs belong to a fairy as yet without a body.

This was such a fun day, everyone got right into doll-making. Most of the participants had never made a doll before, so the results are really quite amazing. We began the day in serious rain thanks to Andrea, the storm, but only one person was unable to make it. The participants appeared to have a lot of fun, too.

Some of the participants were old friends from Camp MiniHaHa, but many more were people I had never met before. The Mini Day Out is a joint venture of the Valley and Halifax-Dartmouth mini and doll groups. They have two of these a year, as well as their regular meetings, of course.



Polymer Clay Doll Workshop

This weekend I will be teaching a polymer clay dollhouse doll workshop in Nova Scotia, and as I hadn't made dolls for quite a while, I decided to do a few body parts. By just after lunch, I had four ladies ready to put together; they will all go into the Tudor market hall, eventually. A man has been sculpted, but not yet bakes; tomorrow, I hope to give him 3 friends to share the oven with (hehe!)

My old clay is giving me a bit of a problem; it has tiny air pockets in it that pop up when it is baked, despite a lot of "working" the clay. Hopefully I can sand these tiny imperfections out, or hide them with paint. Legs don't worry me, as the ladies will get stockings and shoes to cover any imperfections, but problems on hands and faces are more worrisome. These ladies all have inserted eyeballs, that's why they are staring like that.

It's a funny thing about making individually sculpted dolls; old and middle-aged dolls are no problem whatsoever, but I have a very hard time making young faces! These ladies are mostly of the older variety; once they are painted there might be other faces jumping out. Oh yes, that is another weird thing with dolls; I can't really decide what I am making, they decide for themselves.....

As well as making the dolls, I am also working again on last year's Camp MiniHaHa project. The raw edges of the pink foam have been covered with stained or painted wood, and the next step will be to repair some of the chips in the "stucco" that happened when one of the pieces of framing decided to

 go on crooked, and had to be redone. My goal is to have it finished to display at camp in September. As it requires lots of stock in the shop, I will work my way through a fair bit of polymer clay in the next few month as the shop will sell soaps and scents of various sorts made with lavender and other plant essences. Waiting to be worked on are Lite Brite pegs to be turned into bottles, and then I have to find appropriate, tiny labels and boxes for these items. Although I bought some very nice furniture for this shop in Victoria, BC in March, I am still inclined to try and make my own shop furniture, sort of shabby chic.

It is my hope that I will be able to post more regularly, now that my life is more or less back to normal. However, I won't do an iris tutorial, as Joanne Swanson has recently done that on her blog site, and my design for irises is based on hers; the only thing I do differently is to build the petals up on a tiny 1/8" circle platform (see tutorial on poinsettia plants).

The People from the Miniature Market

Merry Christmas to all of you from the shoppers and the proprietors of the Chipping Littleham weekly market!