Doll Baby

"Doll Baby" is a 'healing doll' made for my sister in law, Shelly, and is based upon my late husband, James' baby photos. I used my husband's hair (he was vain of his long, beautiful hair and wanted me to have it for my doll making) and a pair of my husband's pajamas to make the boy's clothing. His name comes from what my husband called me and what my sister in law's father called her: "Doll Baby". Description: He has silk gauze over my own modeled paper clay mask attached to a weighted stuffed cloth head and body. He is a life-sized newborn 19 inches long and weighs 6 lbs stuffed with alpaca and glass seed beads. His body is my own design and his cloth over clay face is done similar to the method Susie McMahon uses. He has a watercolor face, eyes and body, varnished for archival purposes, human hair felted on and wired hands which can be posed to grasp your finger. He can sit and has loosely jointed limbs so he has movement like a very young baby.

Here's a baby boy doll being 'born'. He's a special little fellow with a fully cloth stuffed body, modeled paper clay features with silk gauze overlay and hair from James. He's going to James' sister, Michelle, for a memorial doll. I think she's going to name him Nick. I'll have completed photos by May 15 and am planning on entering him into Doll Net for their baby doll challenge in the expert division.

Here's a primitive doll challenge and a black and white assemblage challenge (a two-fer, if you will) I recently completed.  Since I can't ever decide whether I like making dolls or I like piecing fabric for quilts, I've decided to try my hand at combining the two.

The primitive doll challenge specified that the doll be 20 inches maximum and made with recycled denim
and the black and white challenge specified that only black and white fabric was to be used.

This assemblage is 36 inches x 24 inches.  The birds are wired and stuffed and made with white denim, the background is cut and pieced white denim, recycled, batted and quilted.  The doll is cloth face, cloth hair, painted features, painted shoes and is removable from her 'strings'.

I call it Cordelia and the Cockatoos.