Waldorf Doll Hospital - part 3

This is part 3 in a series where I take two very old and bedraggled Waldorf dolls and try to bring them back to their original forms.  Click here for Part One and Part Two.

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We woke up yesterday to harsh winds and a chilly, wet world.  It seemed colder than usual, but I was still surprised to see mammoth-sized snowflakes whizzing through the air.

The gas boiler has been shorting itself out again, which is probably for the best since utilities costs are astronomically high in England.  So the kids and I hunkered down on the couch, wrapped ourselves in blankets and cats to keep warm, and spent the day reading stories, drinking tea, and doing handwork.

If nothing else, it's perfect weather for handwork.  And I know a doll who has been waiting patiently for a new head of hair.

Rosey's old hairdo was very short, just like Sunburst's was when I brought Rosey to life for her.  In fact, Sunburst didn't have hair that reached past her shoulders until she was about seven or eight.  For a time I didn't think it would ever grow, but she surprised me, like she always does.  Finally her hair grew and grew and grew into a thick, almost unmanageable mane.  She wears it in a ponytail because otherwise we'd have to make the doorways bigger.  ;)

Sunburst thought long and hard about whether or not Rosey's hair should change, too.  She finally decided that she wanted it a little bit longer than shoulder length.  When she didn't change her mind all week, I knew she meant it.  So yesterday I pulled out the mohair balls and got to work.

First I found a book with a slick cover that was the right length.  I wrapped the mohair around and around fairly thickly.  I used about 3/4 of a 40g ball for this underlayer.  (For long hair I would have used the entire ball and a larger book.)

 

I found a sewing thread that didn't offer too much contrast, and then Sunburst and I searched for some tape.  It's the key to sewing doll hair on your machine.  It keeps the hair in place and the feed moving nice and easy.  The right tape simplifies the whole process.

You want to be able to tape the hair in place, run it through the machine, and then remove the tape. Masking tape is a good choice when it comes to sewing hair because it's not too adhesive.  Removable highlighter tape would probably be perfect.  I had neither, and because our car has been in the shop for almost a month, I had to make-do with what I had-- address labels.  I tested them out and they were a bit too sticky, so Sunburst and I applied them to our hands repeatedly until they lost some of their adhesiveness.  Then I applied them to one side of the hair (where I would run stitches for bangs), flipped the book over, and ran them along the other side.  I slid the hair off the book, and ran it through my machine.

We used the same book and the same amount of mohair for the overlayer, only this time, we put the "tape" on one end of the book.  I cut the yarn at the other end, and carefully applied "tape" to the underside of the hair.  This would be the center part.  I ran it through the machine, Sunburst picked off the tape, and then it was ready to go.

I pinned it on, and we had a good look.  It was an awful lot of hair-- a huge change for Rosey.  But all things considered, maybe it wasn't too far-fetched.  For fun, I asked Sunburst to take her ponytail out, and then I had a healthy laugh at the sight of the two of them together.

Sunburst helped sew on Rosey's new locks, and then she spent some time at the sewing machine working on a new dress.  She has become quite handy with the machine lately, so I expect this will be the first of many new doll dresses in the coming months.

Now the dolls are finally finished!  Are you ready for the happy ending?

Here are my girls with Rosey and Ella, then and now...

 

 

 As far as happy endings go, it doesn't get much happier than that!

Waldorf Doll Hospital - part 2

This is part two of a story in which I tell how I sucked in my breath, gathered my courage, and tried to fix my children's well-loved, yet horribly damaged Waldorf dolls, Ella and Rosey.  If you missed part one of this story, you can find it here.

WARNING: The below post contains potentially frightening images.  If you're my daughter Sunburst, turn back now.  DO NOT read this post or casually glance down the page unless you want to see exactly what I did to fix your doll... and I assure you, you don't!

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I'm so sorry to have left you all on a cliff hanger, dear friends.  I wish I could have finished the story right away and let you know that everything turned out all right in the end... but I wasn't at the end yet.  I was still sewing and fixing and praying right along with you.

So where was I?  Oh yes, Rosey.  Dear, sweet, bedraggled Rosey... I had no idea how I was going to fix her terribly worn head, just that I had to do something.  It really was a complete leap of faith.

I set her down and picked out the stitches that held on the remnants of her hair, and then gave her one long, last look. Sunburst had implored me that I leave her head as intact and unchanged as possible, and yet, she wanted the neck strengthened at the same time.  Keep the head shape, fix the neck.  Talk about impossible!

The sturdiness of a Waldorf doll's neck depends solely upon the structure of her head.  When I created Rosey, I didn't really understand what I was doing.  I hadn't even seen a Waldorf doll outside of a catalog.  I only had a pattern, a bag of wool, and some fabric to go on, and so I ended up not making the head very firmly, and after a fair bit of play, things got a little wonky.  Her chin line and neck line ended up in two different locations. She was still loveable and sweet, but not the most well-crafted doll ever.

To give Rosey the firm neck she deserves, I had to take drastic measures.  In order to do what Sunburst wanted me to do most of all, I had to do exactly what she didn't want me to do.  I had to rebuild Rosey's head.  There was really nothing else I could do. 

I cringed as I carefully cut off the torn and loose fabric of her face.  I cut around her eyes and mouth, leaving just a little bit of skin there, as well as the stitching in the back where the embroidery thread had gone through.  Her features were as preserved as I could keep them.

 

I cut the line at her neck, and then cut her eyeline and chin line.  All that shaping was gone in an instant.  I was so scared that I was causing irreversible damage at this point that I don't even think I was breathing.  I peeled back the stockinette that encapsulated her head like fascia, and then I held her head together with one hand as I used my other hand to carefully wrap large strips of new wool batting around her.  By then her head looked enormous, and I had to call Einstein to come and help tug her original stockinette back over her head while I held everything in place.  I pulled a new tube of stockinette over the old tube, just to keep everything nice and tidy.

I tied Rosey's neckline, and it was definitely more firm, but now what?  Rosey's head looked like a giant blob!

I assured myself that I was doing the right thing, and after all, it wasn't as if I had recarded her head.  I had only added more wool to it.  Now, all I had to do was re-tie her shaping lines, starting with her eyeline.  I gratefully used her old eyes as a guide, and tightly tied on a new line, forcing the blob of wool to take shape.  Then I quickly tied the chin line and stitched it to the eyeline.

Now poor Rosey looked like a hot cross bun!

Her eyeline kept slipping down below her old eyes, so I ended up taking a few small stitches to hold it in place.  What else could I do?  I just had to hope that she looked somewhat the same.  And if she didn't, I hoped it wouldn't be the end of the world.  I hoped Sunburst would forgive me.  She's old enough to know that sometimes things don't always work out the way you hope they will.

I measured and sewed a new skin casing for Rosey's head and slipped it on.  There was really no way to gauge how she looked at this point?  Was she still Rosey?  I could feel her old eyes and mouth below the skin with my fingertips, so I pulled out some colored pins and stuck them in.

And then I let out my breath.  She kind of still looked like Rosey.

 

I needed a second opinion, so I showed her to Ella.  Ella agreed.  There was a hint of Rosey still in there.

I decided to put Rosey aside for Sunburst's approval in the morning, and then I had a look at Ella.  She was definitely not as damaged as Rosey, and so I had been harboring a secret hope that fixing her would be easier.  Simple, even.  Maybe I could just use the advice from my doll book and just lay some new fabric over her old face?

No.  It was immediately obvious that it wasn't going to work.  All the holes in her old skin showed right through that new fabric.  So I thought maybe I could just cover up those holes with some new fabric, and then it would work.  Nope.  That looked even worse.  The contrast between her old skin and the new skin showed completely through the new skin.  I would have to do something else... but what?  I didn't yet know.

First thing was first.  Her holes needed to be mended, especially the one at her nose.  When I made Ella, I gave her a nose.  The directions in my book said that to keep the shape of the nose, you should add a little glue to it.  She looked awfully cute at first, but not even a year had passed before her nose wore right through the fabric.  There was no way I was going to remake her nose so it could tear through her face again, and I had already told Moonshine as much.  She only frowned for a minute, but then readily agreed.  Ella 2.0 was going to be nose-free and hole-free.

So I wasn't giving Ella a new nose, but I still had to fix the damage that her old nose had created.  Rather than stitch the two holes in her face, I decided to just to worry about making them less two-tone.  New fabric wasn't going to do it, so I decided to graft some skin from her old body.  I cut pieces of her old arm fabric and placed them so that the edges of her old face skin overlapped them.  Tone-wise, it was much better match!

Now I just wanted to create a smoothness to her face that would hold the old skin in place, so I carefully pulled another stockinette over her head, leaving everything just the way it was.  Now Ella looked a little like she was ready to rob a bank.  I decided to give her another eyeline, just over this last layer.  I tied it on and stitched it down so it wouldn't slip below her eyes, and then sewed up another skin for her.

 The next time the girls saw their dolls, they looked something like this:

I wasn't so sure about Rosey.  Her head still has a bit of creasing I'm unhappy with at the chin and neck, but then again, so did the original Rosey.  Otherwise, did she look enough the same?  Sunburst thought it was good enough, and so I sewed their arms and heads onto their bodies, stab-stitched the lines at their thighs and feet, and moved on to the embroidery phase.

I decided to tackle Ella first, because honestly, she seemed easier.  Moonshine picked among the thread colors I had and found what she thought was most similar to the original.  Then she sat and watched every single stitch.  It was nerve-wracking for me, but I imagine I would have wanted to be present if my child was getting a new face, too.

I could feel her old stitches underneath, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been.  I made sure to keep her eyes a little bit too far apart, as I had originally.  Moonshine reminded me that they weren't supposed to match-- one was more almond-shaped and one was more round.  By no means was I to fix them-- she wanted them exactly as they were!

As soon as I had a face on Ella, Moonshine couldn't wait to see what she looked like with hair.  And with the hair on her head, she looked... well... more than just a little like Ella.  She looked almost exactly like Ella!

Moonshine was overjoyed!  She couldn't stop staring at her and smiling!

Next I moved on to Rosey and repeated the process with Sunburst, who also painstakingly selected the embroidery colors and watched every stitch.  I wasn't completely happy with the results, but Sunburst was.  She begged me to stop exactly where I was at that moment and not make one more stitch.

But was it Rosey?  I had been so used to seeing her worn face that honestly, it was hard for me to tell.  I pinned just a bit of new hair onto her head to check?  And still, I wasn't sure.  So then I pinned on the remnants of her old hair just to make sure.

And....

It's Rosey!  98 percent, Sunburst tells me.

And that is as far as we've gotten.  I spent the rest of the weekend sewing doll clothes as a present for Moonshine's birthday yesterday, which turned out to be a smashing success!

For more on that, and to see Rosey's final outcome, you'll have to tune in next time.  Unfortunately, I have a bit more work to do before any of us can know how it all turns out in the end.

To be continued...

For the continuation of this story, please see Part 3.

Waldorf doll hospital

Moonshine's tenth birthday is fast approaching, and all she wants for her birthday is to have her doll fixed.  Not any old doll, but Ella, her Waldorf doll.  The one she's been loving on for almost eight years.

We've gone round and round about whether or not we should fix her doll for longer than I can remember.   Over the years she's had a few stitches and both partial and full hair replacements, but Moonshine has been unwilling to let me do anything more out of fear that Ella will be changed.  Unrecognizably altered.  Too different.

I totally understand where she's coming from.  It's a daunting task.  What if I mess up?  It's not just a doll, if you know what I mean.  It's Ella.  And though she looks a bit worse for wear now, she's part of the family.  She's been around longer than Kitty Bill has.  She's a part of us.

And then there is Rosey, Sunburst's doll.  The first Waldorf doll I ever made.

In eleven years, Rosey has been through her share of adventures.  She has required several rounds of stitches and hair replacements.  At one point there was an episode of body restuffing.  She has been around the block and then some.  The poor thing has been absolutely loved to death.

Sunburst has been even more reluctant than Moonshine.  Poor Rosey has been losing her stuffing for years now-- wearing socks on her hands and feet to keep her wool from falling out.  Her entire body, including her face, looks like it has been mauled by an army of pitbulls.  Not once, but twice.  At least.  She requires total reconstructive surgery.

Every couple of years Sunburst and Moonshine bring up the idea of fixing their dolls, and before we can get to it, they change their minds.  But this year they are finally ready.  Both of them.

And so last weekend Moonshine and I set up a makeshift Waldorf Doll Hospital.  The dolls were brought in and placed gingerly in their bed, treated to cups of water, flowers, and get well soon cards. And then one by one they were carried off on stretchers to the first step in their process.  The spa soak.

Here's Rosey waiting her turn.

After soaking in their individually prepared baths with wool wash, they spent several hours in the sauna, or rather, splayed out on the drying rack over a space heater.  In the morning they spent some time sunning in the garden.  That helped them dry a little more, but it also helped lighten the fabric which has darkened over the years.  Frankly, I wasn't quite sure where to start, and I figured it couldn't hurt.

Moonshine thought they looked happier already!

I brought them inside and the girls and I evaluated just which body parts they wanted me to replace.  The dolls had another visit to the sauna-- drying tightly compressed wool takes an awfully long time-- and I got busy cutting and sewing new body parts.

 For Rosey: one pair of arms, and one entire trunk/legs piece.

For Ella: one pair of arms, and two feet.

Sunburst and Moonshine took this opportunity to sit down at the table with me and sew some felt hearts which will be carefully inserted during surgery.  Despite my sewing machine giving me fits, I managed to pull the sewing bit off.  Unfortunately, I'm well aware that this part was the easiest, and the painful task of decapitating the dolls was the next step.

After a break that involved a bit of knitting in the sunshine and a quick two overs of cricket in the back garden, I came back inside and prepped the dolls for surgery.  Rosey's wool needed re-carding, so I took a deep breath, opened her up, and emptied her insides over a towel to let them finally fully dry themselves.


Before the girls had too much time to gasp, I quickly and carefully picked out Ella's upper seams, then removed and emptied her arms.  There were still a few bits of damp wool, so I pulled out a hair dryer and gave their innards a quick blast.

While Sunburst was busy carding Rosey's innards, Moonshine and I tried Ella's new feet to see how they looked.

The poor dear!  Moonshine hemmed and hawed over it awhile and finally decided that Ella would be happiest if her feet matched her legs.  So we opened her up, gave her bits a final blast, and Moonshine set to carding while I sewed up another body.

Bodies are one thing, but repairing heads are an entirely different matter.  My dollmaking book says that if you need to repair a face, you can just cut new skin, stretch it over the old skin, and tack it in place at the hairline.  I'm sure it's very good advice if you have minor wear and tear.  But what if your doll looks like she has had most of her face chewed off?  Then what?  The book doesn't say.  Which is really what has been holding me back all these years.  Is Rosey beyond repair?

Because the next part was a bit scary, Sunburst was adamant that she didn't want to be around to watch.   Moonshine agreed.  So one night while they slept, I pulled out the scissors and my courage and set to work.

I started on Rosey first, because she needed the most attention.  And part of me knew that if I really messed up Rosey, then I could just back away from Ella with my hands up and not completely ruin Moonshine's birthday.

The main problem with Rosey, besides her skin falling off, was that I really didn't know what I was doing when I made her.  I was an overzealous Waldorf convert back in the day.  Not only did I make a full-size doll for a two-year-old (and then out of fairness had to repeat the process for Moonshine three years later), I didn't make her head firm enough nor her neck strong enough.  She was cute, but a bit wobbly from the get-go.  And her mouth-- I know you've all been thinking about her mouth embroidery since the beginning of this post.  Yes, she has full lips.  I recently read somewhere that we unconsciously make our dolls in the mirror image of our children.  I don't know what I was thinking at the time, but Sunburst does have full lips like Rosey's... just as Ella's wide smile mirrors Moonshine's.

Sometimes I think these dolls turn out a certain way for a reason.  Whatever the reason, Rosey's lips have been kissed a thousand times since she came into being, and so I have had no regrets about embroidering them that way.  Until now.  Because now I'm expected to remake them just the way they were.

First thing was first, though.  Rosey needed a stronger head and more firmness to her neck.  There was nothing to do but remove what was left of her hair and face, cut her eye and chin lines, and pray.

To be continued...

For the continuation of this story, please see Part 2 and Part 3.