Here's my Gossips doll taught by Leslie Molen. She's no where close to being complete after an intense two-day class. She's mostly pinned together and still needs hair and accessories. But I learned so much from it. The costume was mostly sewn at home as homework. The colors are a bit different from what I tend to choose because I wanted to challenge myself. So everything is more of a muted jewel tone. I'll work on finishing her by next month's doll club meeting.
The head is fabric covered over a molded face that Leslie made. She showed us the steps to slowly gluing on the knit fabric. Nothing fancy, just Aileen's Tacky Glue and a paintbrush. The eyes and lips are just layers of Folk Art acrylic paints. Leslie uses the kind that's commonly sold in Michael's for tole painters which is good because it's fairly inexpensive. Her makeup is the chalks that they sell to scrapbookers, but I think that inexpensive makeup palettes that you get at the dollar store would work just as well. The trick is to spray a fixative on it afterward. She recommends one made by Windsor & Newton.
Next she showed us how to make our dolls stand on their own. The trick is to use 3/8" copper tubing that's commonly sold at hardware stores as refrigerator tubing.
She cut lengths for us and showed us how to hammer the ends flat. We couldn't do it inside on the granite tiled floors so we took a quick trip outside. (We were lucky that the weather was so nice and beautiful. But can you believe that was the only time that we stepped outside during Doll U? Everything was provided for us ... food, rooms, teachers and fun events from early morning to late night.)
I managed to get my doll to stand. She's a bit unstable right now, but when her shoes are finished there will be three solid layers of cardboard on her feet to steady her. I may decide to slip in a metal washer or penny in her shoes for extra weight. What happened is that I sewed her legs just a wee bit more forward than what I needed to balance her torso and head. Isn't she slightly disturbing at this stage? But I also liked her too. Poor armless creature. Reminds me of Boxing Helena.
Lots of nice ladies in this class. I was lucky enough to sit at a table with Carol. She was such a hoot! I loved it! Her she is being a bit naughty with her Gossips doll. This is the point where we created leg joints using the longest needles that we had. You don't want to lose those things in the carpet!
Leslie was a great teacher. She had a central table in the room set up for demos. Whenever she wanted to show us something we'd gather around her and watch the next step. Then we'd go back to our tables and work. As you can see we were a happy bunch and probably got as much giggling in as sewing.
Here's the pictures of our Gossips dolls all pinned in place. The rabbits are from her class on Sunday for a sweet rabbit.
