Life always tries to balance its forces.
There is no Yin without Yang and vice versa. Life is always a cycle, always striving to close the circle. At least this was my first thought, when last week I looked at this little doll with a special assignment lying on my studio table …
At the doll doctor
Just recently, I had worked on a custom doll without a face … and now there it was, the exact opposite lying on the table: A doll without a face, which now should get a face!
This little 30 cm doll came in as a patient in my “doll hospital”:
It was originally a gift to the birth of a small boy, but has never been quite played with…
This Waldorf doll, which by the way is quite lovely in its own simplicity, was intended for very small children. It is thus very lightly stuffed, and has – following the classical tradition – no eyes or mouth. Actually, children do not necessarily need these features, they are not the basis for a childs creative play – on the contrary.
However, every child is different, and therefore some may need this feature. A face, a facial expression, can be a connecting point in order to establish a relationship and to find its way into emotional nurturing play with the doll.
However, by now this little boy has become a big brother. And the mother wanted this same doll as a first doll for his little sister. So now the doll should get a face after all…
After a brief “anamnesis”, I was able to take in this small patient at the beginning of the week. ;)
A new face
Since I rather embroider the faces of my dolls, I had to start a little more complicated from the beginning: Because I could not simply paint the face on, first the hair would have to be removed first to hide the embroidery threads underneath it later.
Therefore, I first marked the placement of the eyes and mouth with pins and then very carefully loosened the dolls wig, crocheted from brown mohair wool, from the head.
Whenever you carry out such work on a doll that you have not sewn yourself in the first place, for a moment there you always tend to keep your breath as a dollmaker, because you never know what to expect.
This time I was lucky enough – the hair and the head underneath was in good condition still … and I succeeded to loseen the hair undisturbed from the head. The wig would later again be sewn to the head.
At first I put in the mouth with a red embroidery thread.
And finally I embroidered two small brown eyes – And just like that a dear little dolls looked at me smiling.
Then I just had to reattach the wig firmly onto the head again … then a little brushing of the hair … and a fuzzy-head became visible. (You could now even make two little pigtails!)
Adding a little cheek red for refreshing and my small patient was just as new …
Finishing
So with this my custom order was actually finished … or wasn’t it…?
Alas I was still not quite satisfied with the result… Something was still off – the head somehow did not match the body anymore? The braids and the sweet face were now demanding something … hmm … more …?!
Then it occurred to me: The old clothes did not really harmonize with the new style of the doll –
Luckily I still had a small pink dress still lying in the drawer there somewhere, that now should come to some good use…
… and a little knitted pink scarf …and velours pants for underneath the dress to match the rest. ;)
… So the big brothers old doll now really had become a true “girls doll” for his little sister.
Nevertheless the doll could still be transformed back at any time, as soon as one took off the pink clothes and opened the pigtails up, it became the original boy doll again (only with having a face now) …
Now the small patient could finally be released as “cured” and is already looking forward to many hours filled with play together with the new little dollmama.
As much as I like to have such exciting tasks at hand, I was glad that the operation was successful and all involved parties are satisfied with the result.
But as mentioned above, since life always tries to balance out its forces, it so should be that only a little later another doll patient should need a place here in my doll hospital…
But I’ll save telling more on that for another time.
;)
