Miniature Dolls

At the time I was ready for people in my dollhouse room, I was collecting old and new porcelain dolls. I took a workshop to make a miniature lady doll so I would know how and what went into the creation of good porcelain. This lady is the result.

Setting her glass eyes was the most challenging part to me ... she ended up a bit cross-eyed. Her hair is made from silk roving. Curls were made by wetting a small hank, wrapping it around knitting needles, and then baking it at a low temperature to set the curls. I enjoyed the process of creating her, but only needed to make one doll from "scratch". I purchased the already painted and fired porcelain body parts to construct the people and toy dolls for this dollhouse room.

Both ladies dresses are made from silk fabric. They're wearing all the appropriate undergarments and hooped petticoats from the Victorian era. They even have silk stockings and high-heeled shoes made from fine leather. The baby's smocked dress and bonnet are Swiss batiste cotton. I had knitted the baby blanket from sewing thread using the the largest sewing needles I had to knit it.

As you can see, the dolls are small, especially the dolly.

She's also wearing a smocked silk chiffon dress with petticoats and leather shoes. As I recall, all the dolls shoes were made from old kid leather gloves.

You may recognize that I've done English smocking, which is a surface embroidery across pleated fabric. This scale is too small to make pleats by rows of running stitches. Tiny pleats were formed by drawing up threads in the fabric weave at even intervals. It was hard to see the gathering thread as a guideline for the embroidery, so I drew chalk lines to help me evenly space the smocking stitches.

I'm glad I did all of this about thirty years ago when my eyesight was good. I could never see to work on this scale today.