a bit about sewing small

The monday afternoon project of a while ago was inspired by a book I loved as a child. Recently I discovered that it is a book well-loved by many other people--I always thought it was an obscure old volume that was forgotten by the rest of the world. The book is Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field. Hitty is a small doll carved out of wood on a Maine farmstead sometime around 1830. The book traces her travels and adventures. By one means and another Hitty climbs trees, takes a steamship journey to the tropics, lives with poor families and with rich ones. She is the quintessential travel doll and has a wide and devoted following. The original Hitty doll still exists, and now there are many reinterpretations of her in wood, resin, cloth, and other media. Though I love the story, the first Hitty doll that really spoke to me was this one. When I saw all the furniture and accesories with her, I nearly swooned. An entire little Hitty world.

I decided to try to make my own Hitty-scale doll. The difficult thing about Hitty is that she is quite small, only 6.25 or 6.5 inches. Not quite as small as dollhouse scale, but almost. I didn't have any rag doll patterns for such a small one so I made up my own. I've made two prototypes so far and am getting happier with how she turns out. The first prototype I don't have pictures of (except the rough pieces shown in the earlier post). I made a few changes and came up with this:

The height came out right; she is just six and a quarter inches tall. Jointed with buttons at the shoulders and hips.

Her feet have flat bottoms. I prefer that to the sock-shaped kind of feet you find on many rag dolls, with no soles. She also has what I modestly believe to be a very nice profile for a rag doll

With a real chin, a head that is round in all dimensions, and a shaped bottom. She is stuffed with wool roving. In my early doll-making days I used polyfil and I must say that once I tumbled to the fact that, as a spinner, I know where to get lots of wool roving, and that wool could be used to stuff things--I am never going back. Wool is unbelievably nicer.

On the next version I think I may make some changes to her hips so that her legs hang differently; I also have an alternate body pattern that would allow for simple hinged arms and legs. I haven't decided which I like better. I enjoy figuring out how to shape things with darts and curves. One challenging thing about making cloth dolls--at least from my inexperienced perspective--is that there is always some part that is less than lovely. You don't get, or at least I don't yet get, a nice unobtrusive line through all joints; there's always some part of the body that begs to be covered by clothing. Which is fine for a doll that's going to wear clothes from 1830-1840, but a interesting puzzle in some other cases. It's a lot of fun to rediscover my childhood love of making stuffed things.

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[Herman Woudenberg]

You are a interesting person.
What made you the way you are?