Folk Art Dolls

It’s been quite a while since I posted over here! I’m sure I’ve been as busy as ever but working on many different projects at a time and not really finishing anything enough to share here.

However I wanted to tell you about a little journey I’ve been on recently to create a Folk Art doll.

I love all folk and naive art and since my childhood I’ve loved to sew soft toys.  Over the years I’ve created a number of little creatures for classes and magazine patterns including my Patchwork Pony of course.

But for a while now I have wanted to create a simple doll type friend who could be held in your hand or placed in your pocket.

And then this year, with the popularity of my Dream Birds, I decided the it would be fun to make 3D folk art dolls inspired by them. However it has taken a number of prototypes to find my way with this…

I started off with this crazy looking version of Fidgeon.

I was being as playful as possible with this and using the same fabric and techniques I use for the Dream Birds but just in a doll shape.

The legs were very long and thin and even though the knotted knees worked well I knew they had to change!

So I tried again with 2 new birds.

These ones had shorter, slightly thicker legs and I inserted pipe cleaners inside to make them more substantial and also bendy. I stopped trying to make them look like actual Dream Birds and just had fun making them characters.

But they still weren’t right. They had ended up too comical looking and instead I wanted simple and naive.

So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this little guy…

At last I was happy!

This was exactly what I had wanted, a soft magical little friend with enough personality but not too much!

It turned out the legs were the main problem but also the 3D body shape I’d been using with a flat gusset base. Instead I made this one look flatter by getting rid of the gusset and it worked.

I quickly made another one. In my head these are both still Dream Bird dolls, with beaks and wings, but just more doll like.

With this success and with Halloween approaching I tried my hand at scary dolls!

I made 3 all together on the same day a few weeks ago.

What a fun day that was!! This is very much my happy place. You all know how much I like to be free and playful with my creating and this turned out to be the perfect medium for that.

I’m a big fab of spooky, scary, supernatural stuff and love this time of year. I’m very interested in how so many different cultures and faiths celebrate it in so many different yet similar ways.

I’m not big on all the consumerism surrounding halloween but still want to celebrate Samhain and the turning of the pagan/witches year so these dolls are the perfect way to mark this with something creative and magical.

I have plans for many more! Next up I think I will try a cat and then perhaps just an actual doll! I will perhaps sell these at a future time and hope to put a class together too.

However for now I just want to enjoy my playtime and my magical new friends. Happy Halloween/Samhain/Day of the Dead everyone!