My Very Cute Cloth dolls

I have always loved cloth dolls!

I started at very young age making cloth dolls, I was about 12 years of age when I sewed my first cloth doll with my moms help. After that I was hooked!

My favorite cloth is vintage...

I love finding old patterns of days long gone and creating dolls that have not been around for a while. In fact right now I am working a 26 inch cloth doll from 1968. The pattern is a reprint of the pattern but it works....

I look for vintage patterns through ebay, garage sales, second hand stores or any where I can.

I love going into the past, after all where would we all be if there was no past?

One of my favorite dolls that I have made up is a 1928 Gingham doll. What was so interesting was using the gingham for eyes and the face was done by hand with cotton floss.

I used a blue Gingham for the dress, boots and hat. Next I used cotton muslin for the body. The hair is a dark red yarn. I love her because she is a small, but simple doll.

Sometimes I will mix up the patterns of cloth dolls just to give the doll a whole new look....

For instance I might use the pattern of a body from one doll and the head from another pattern. Or just take the pattern and give it an entire new look. I have done so with the picture below. It was to plain, so I took bright colors, different yarn, staining, different legs and got this look.

The legs and arms are from another pattern, I used some wild but colorful yarn for her hair. She is stained with walnut stain, the mouth is done with black cotton floss. It gave the vintage pattern a whole new look!

Sometimes I will not even use a pattern! I will just start cutting with an idea in mind and come up with something like this next doll....

I had some Denim fabric that looked as if it had been bleached out! Cool I thought and I decided it should be this rag cloth doll rabbit. No patterns were used just a lot of imagination! I just began cutting and designed this 18 inch sitting rabbit. I also stained the fabric with walnut stain to help along that old look. His face is done with pink floss and filled with fiber fill!
To me each of my dolls has its own personality! and that for me is all the fun in creating cloth dolls!
I think cloth dolls is a lost art, and so I feel its important to keep imagintation alive as well as the past remembered.