Bella

NB: Before I go on, one of my wonderful followers sent me a message to say that the comments part of my posts was missing. I didn’t change anything, but it might have been kicked off at some point by Google+. That’s the only thing I’ve changed. If you’ve been trying to leave a comment and couldn’t, so sorry. I didn’t even notice there was a problem.

I’ve just finished this little girl for the shop. I have a customer that requested a brown skinned doll for her granddaughter and the shop owner also wants one for the store. So I’m going to make three dolls. I’m not sure if she wants a raggedy doll like the little one she had when I was speaking to her or if she wants a bigger one. She wasn’t really clear, but that’s okay. I’ll have three for her to choose from.

The first one is Bella. She is approx. 14” tall. The pattern said it would 18”, but it’s not. The arms and legs were way to too big for the body and head, so I wasted fabric, stuffing and time not checking first. However, I just assumed, obviously incorrectly, that the proportions would be right. I’m getting so that designing my own would be much easier and less hassle. I’ve had about 3 or 4 patterns over the past year or so that I had to fix, so not a happy camper.

The long and short of this is that, I had to resize the body and head for this doll upwards, to be proportional to the arms and legs, and decided to down size the arms and legs to match the original body and head. Now I have a pattern for a 14” doll and a 12’ doll. But no 18” like noted on the pattern. Of course after all that, I made a new head and grabbed the small one, AGAIN. Arggghhhh. I put that head and the small body in a bag and maybe it’ll get used sometime soon..

Here’s Bella. The only clothing that’s removable is the dress. I stitched all kinds of buttons onto the pants, and rather than gather the waist and calves, I just made pleats. The colour on her cheeks isn’t quite as pronounced as it looks in the picture, I’m not sure why it shows up like that.

Aren’t the sneakers cute. I got them at a little shop about three years ago and thankfully I bought a few pairs, because soon after she closed up the business. The socks are faux, I just put the ribbing around the ankles and tucked them into the shoes. I glued the shoes onto her feet, the ribbing is also glued in place. I  stitched the knots of the laces so they can’t be undone.

I don’t know which of the dolls will go to the little girl, but if it’s this one, for sure I figured it would be too tempting to take the shoes off.

Her hair is four different colours of mohair locks. The colours are two shades of brown, a light pink and a light turquoise. I gave her acrylic eyes. The fabric is a quilting fabric, and I was really happy because it has a faint marbling throughout, which helps with the skin tones.

I love the cotton print, and I had some bird charms in my stash, so I attached one at the neck of the bodice. The dress opens in the back so it can be removed for washing if need be.

And here she is close up from one profile to the other. Am halfway through the next doll, will post that very soon. Enjoy… ;o)