Heiroglyph
(28 in/72 cm)
This doll was inspired by its colors. I have seen this combination of colors everywhere lately: clothing, housewares, logos, you name it. The more I saw it, the more I liked it so I decided to give it a whirl in a doll. I'm not sure why I chose to do a less freeform, mainly rectilinear approach, but basically I like how it turned out. I made a sketch first, showing where the horizontal and vertical lines would go; I normally don't sketch more than an outline at th beginning. She looks like an Egyptian heiroglyph to me (though that didn't occur to me when I made the sketch), hence her name.
One of the things I most enjoy about making dolls is the hair; I feel that gives a doll its personality. When I started making flat dolls like this one the hair presented the most fun challenge. With a 3D doll, the hair can kind of go all over and I tended to make long hair, or hair consisting of individual strands coming out all over the head. Flat doll hair is a whole new ballgame and I'm always trying to find new ways to do it. This was done by making twiggy, coral like branches, inspired by work I saw on the Gooseflesh blog. I don't know exactly how she makes her crochet coral, but I made this hair by making chains, slip stitching partway down, branching here, there and everywhere, always working back down with slip stitches. I wanted the doll to look like an old woman so I used a combination of whiteish/grayish fuzzy yarns to get the right effect. I stitched together the branches on the back side so that the hair would form a solid mass, which is essential to hide the stiff cardboard armature between the front of the doll and her fleece backing. It came out looking quite different from the coral pieces that inspired it, and it also led to a variation in Happy.
