Baby Dolls and Their Clothes: Dozens of Projects to Make [Paperback]

Baby Dolls and Their Clothes has good points and bad points. It is a good book in that it offers clear photo instruction on the making of a Waldorf-style doll, and the making of simple clothes. Anyone who has a small amouth of knowledge of sewing and use of patterns should be able to use this book for instruction on making dolls.

However, this book leaves much to be desired.

Most of the dolls in this book are quite amature looking, having their facial features improperly placed or improper proportions, or both. Facial features should ALWAYS be made with the eyes and mouth in an equalateral triangle, a point which is mentioned by the author, but not used in practice on many of the dolls. Cheeks on the dolls in this book tend to be pinked far too low, on level or below the level of the mouth, rather than on the apples of the cheeks as you would see on a real child. The author also suggests marking the features with pencil, which is not advisable if you want the features to last more than a day or two in serious play or cuddling. Embroidered features (or painted features as in Making Dolls by Sunnhild Reinckens) are very resilient and quick to make.

Hair, a subject of much debate, is not covered very well in Baby Dolls and Their Clothes unless you want to make a doll with long hair. My personal opinion is that, while the method given for sewing on long hair is better than most methods used for hair these days (such as wigs, which are not sturdy enough for a doll that will be played with or slept with), the best method for making a dolls hair is still to sew in the hair with a sturdy rug stitch which will not pull out easily. Wigs, or hair that is simply sewed down to the head with another piece of yarn or thread, fall apart quickly and will have to be repaired or replaced. Hair sewed directly into the head lasts practically forever, if sewed in well and tightly. As an example: I still have my doll with sewn in hair from childhood. She was slept and played with every day from kindergarten though grade school. She had one face lift, and a new set of clothes sewn on. Her hair, however, is as strong and full as the day I got her. Wigs, on the other hand, are not strong enough for play. I have repaired dolls from Magic Cabin who's wigs were torn to shreds and the poor dolls scalps were bare and worn. Wigs may save time in the short run, but in the long run it is better to sew in the hair.

The head making instructions in this book are strange to me, as they suggest using a ball of yarn to make the inner head. The problem with this method is that it makes the head too round, and is also more expensive to buy the yarn rather than the plain wool! Simply stuffing the tubing to make the head tightly with wool is a less expensive, more versitile way of making the head. Besides this oddity in the intructions, the way of making the head shown in the book is basically the method used for all waldorf dolls, and is a fairly good method.

There are, I'm sure, more things I could say about this book, but I do not want to detract from the parts of it that are quite worthwhile. The intructions for making clothes are excellent, in that they show you how to make a basic pattern using YOUR doll's measurements and how to adapt it to make many styles of dresses and pants. This is an important skill for a dollmaker, amature or professional, to use, as all hand made dolls vary somewhat in size, even if they are all, say, 16 inches tall. You will get the best fit for your dolls clothes making patterns this way, patterns specific to your doll.

On the whole, I would not recomend this book to a beginning doll maker as it lacks the clarity needed to learn the skill of dollmaking. ...