Am in the midst of another doll project. Many of my past dolls were in silks, fancy brocade, and other courtly fabrics. Very court adjacent outfits with lace, fancy trims, and all the accessories. My next series of dolls, I am using boiled wool fabrics from MOOD fabrics to better have a textured merchant middle class adjacent outfit. trims will be in coordinating or contrasting velvet ribbon, which is perfect scale for dolls at this size. Most of this is left over from the Basel Beer Wives project.
These are porcelain dolls I ordered from my ceramicist in Texas. Hart to Hart Ceramics, they make dolls in a 12" size fashion doll size that works perfect for showing details in a more travel size scale for displays. These dolls are jointed and could be strung with elastic to be movable, for the sake of my situation and type of display taking a different approach this time. Decided, I am epoxying the joints for a stiff doll, just use a doll stand under the skirts. So they don't flop if the elastic lets go. The dolls for the sake of fiber display allows the public to see what styles were worn and trimmed for the average person and also to show the difference in classes. This will go hand in hand with my fiber arts display.
I have always wanted dolls to show different levels of 16th century dress classes. Eventually making ones with Medieval themes and old Norse Viking, late Roman, etc. Visual representations of what you can see in woodcuts prints in the Vecellio's Renaissance Costume Book,16th century compendium of fashion.
Am so excited to get the next part of the dolls underway, for the wool. Since wool woven fabric is not as fray heavy, I can just leave edges raw and line with linen if needed, although for skirts this is not needed. I was able to test this out well on the prior mentioned project. Smaller scale will not effect the way this works. As wool fibers will do what they will and behave the same, it only comes tricky in pleating on a smaller scale, not as easily jammed on a needle like silk or other fibers.
Update the weather was mucky and miserable, we set up only one pop up to accommodate the 6 people who came to talk to the patrons that braved the weather. The inclement conditions meant that the hardcore folks were the ones who braved and wanted to be there. Not the general spectator who had nothing to do on a random Sunday in Autumn. So the folks who stopped in out of the rain, had great questions and were engaged with the material we were providing. Hoping we see their bright inquisitive faces at a future practice or gathering soon. I only brought out some spinning, lucet and some woven fabric as a small display from the packed car. The damp items have been hung up to dry, and be washed eventually.
Actually did wash that dress and it turned out really nice and all the mud came out. I had some tote bags that got wet from sitting on the ground and they completely dried out.
Not worse for the wear,
Maureen
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