WIP BJD Cloth Doll Design *UPDATE*

This book landed in my mailbox today : "Introduction to making cloth dolls" by Jan Horrox. If I had purchased this book before trying to figure the design and pattern on my own, I could have done it much faster! hahaha

I allready understood why a lot of details didn´t work as I thought they would: like the fingers, joints and so on. I´ll keep you posted when I finish the doll completely. 

Cloth doll pattern and designs Part 3

Ok, I had to find a new pattern for my cloth doll. Here is what I have come up with.

I am finally finished with the basic construction of a cloth doll that I actually like. I am so happy, because the birth of this baby was long and hard :-)
Please welcome my very first ball jointed cloth doll! There is still a lot of details to work out, but now that I have det basics, the rest is just adjustments.

She is a tall girl: 29" ( 73 cm), and made of cotton canvas facric. Most of her pattern I found here: 

http://www.anniebee.net/freebies/challenge/

I had severe problems with figuring out the scale in the pattern. I think it has someting to do with the proces of printing the pattern directly from the homepage and selecting the function in the printer setup "fit to page". Hands and legs came out way too small, almost half the correct size. 

I had to make this doll 3 times and continue to adjust the scale before I was content. In the end I gave up trying to figure it out and just went along with my intuition. 

Here are more pics of her wonderful poses: 

I need to remember several thing next time I am making her:

• Gather her upper body front (breasts) more tightly at the center and not so much at the side seams. This will give her better shaped breasts. 
• Put a wooden bead inside her head to help the shape of the nose through the cloth.
• Stuff her really tight on top of her head to avoid wrinkles in the cloth,
• Find a way to avoid the wrinkles in the cloth around her fingers, and make a complete handarmature from pipecleaner that fits the hand. Hide the sharp edges so that they don´t show on the surface. 
• Find something that is working better than those big knee joints :-) I used a big 1 3/4" wooden bead, and it is really nice for animation because of the weight, but it is not very aesthetic and beautiful. Another shape of both the upper and lower joint will fit the rounded bead better. Also I must think of a better method of stringing the bead. The white thread is not nice. 

Tomorrow I will paint her face and make her hair, and go to the craft store to find better joints.

If you have any ideas for me, please don´t hesitate on commenting. I would love to hear from you!

Cloth doll pattern and designs Part 2

I am still working on my cloth doll design and I´m trying to figure out the necessary pattern for the model that are inside my head.  Sewing is NOT the same thing as sculpting!! :-) I find it difficult to fully understand how to sew in 3D... Sculpting is soo much easier! As you might remember, I am trying to make a pattern for a doll that looks a bit like this:

I want my torso more like a womans, so here is what I have for now: 

In this picture you can see that she is getting a nice woman figure, but the breasts are too smal. I will make them bigger on the final pattern. 

In this picture you can see the start of a soft butt :-) This one I am keeping! That was not in my planning, but came as a nice surprice.

Here is her waist too fat! She will have a more narrow waist. Her neck is also too wide. I like a long and slim neck. Follow me tomorrow for my progress :-)

Cloth doll pattern and designs

I love cloth dolls, don´t you?
It is such a pleasure to sew fabrics together and enjoy different textiles, patterns and colors. In my head I have so many different dolls that I want to make, but I am struggeling with some decisions that I need to make first:
The cloth dolls head! How do I sew it in shape? How do I make the eggshaped rounded head? I found several free patterns on the web but somehow they don´t work. The head simply doesn´t turn out the way I want... Let me illustrate:

See the head? It is kinda flat, wide and not eggshaped at all. 

I want my doll to look like this: 

Then I found a similar cloth doll on the web: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/malphi/2193525908/

I like this design. I want mine to look a little like this one, as you see from my sketch, but I still find it hard to decide on the head. It should also be quite big, because I am a little inspired by the big-eyed anime style. 

Well, I also thought about modelling her head in paperclay or polymer clay and simply put that head on the cloth dolls body, but I think that it will look too funny. Why don´t just sculpt the entire body in clay then, right? There is a third possabiliy though: I could make a cloth doll head, and put a face on made from paperclay, just like a mask. I did the same thing in the past, and it is quite nice: 

I could work on with this idea...