Ow, my eye!

This is a doll from the 1950's.
She has a vinyl head and a magic skin body.
She got played with a bit roughly and now her right eye is wonky.

The wonky eye has been pushed into the socket and is wedged at a creepy angle.
Her left eye does not work either. it is stuck closed.

The usual start to doll repairs....off with the head.

It helps to heat the neck area with a hairdryer to soften the vinyl a bit before you attempt to remove the head.

Here you can see that the eyes sit inside pockets that are molded into the vinyl head.

To get the eyes out, you can heat the eyeball area with the hairdryer and then push the eye out of the socket with pressure on those eye sockets inside the head.

Here is what the eyeball looks like once it is extracted from the pocket.
You can buy replacement eyes but fortunately this doll's original eyes were repairable.

This is the inside of one eye.

Both eyes needed a deep cleaning and repair/adjustments of the pivots.

Back go the eyes (the vinyl got warmed up again for that), a freshening up of her face and lipstick, and she is ready to go home.

Re-stringing an antique ball-jointed doll.

This is a Gebruder Heubach doll whose head has come off during shipping.

The head is not damaged....why did it come off?

The head was attached by a wire gizmo that looks homemade. The prongs on this gizmo are too short and slip out of the head too easily.
She needs a new stringing attachment for her head that will not let her head come off so easily.

Another issue with this body is that there are no stringing hooks anywhere.
This is not an uncommon finding in old dolls. The original makers did not think about future elastic replacement when they put together some bodies.

Here is what the person who restrung the doll previously did.
The new elastic was tied to the original elastic remnants.

I could do the same and tie new elastic to the original but the original is fragile and may not stand up to being messed with again.
Also, the new elastic I install will disintegrate with time (as all elastic does) and someday this doll will have to be restrung yet again.

So I am going to install stringing hooks in the least invasive way possible.

First, I remove as much of the old elastic as possible so I can install new hooks into the knee and elbow areas.

Sometimes when you do this you see a horizontal nail down inside the limb. This nail was put through the factory elastic to hold it inside the leg when the doll was originally constructed.
If you find a nail like that you can sometimes just maneuver a new hook to catch on to the nail.

But, in this case, there are no nails reachable with a new hook inside these legs or arms.

So, on to the next plan...
Using the smallest drill bit possible in a twist drill, a hole gets drilled though one side of each lower limb.

The drill hole goes through the center of the limb and a bit into the other side.
Now I have horizontal wires to attach hooks to.

Now all the lower limbs have stringing hooks. The small drill holes will get filled and painted to match the finish of the limbs. The holes will be invisible when done.

Here is her old head hook on the left....the one that slipped out of her head way too easily.
I am replacing it with a 'screwgle'....seen on the right. It will provide a more secure attachment. And, since I am not fond of wire on bisque, a felt circle will go inside the head between the wire and the bisque.

All back together :-)

Re-stringing an English plastic/compo baby

This is "Dorothy".
She has arrived to be re-strung.
She is a vintage British doll with a hard plastic head and a composition body.

Her arms have their original stringing hooks.....a cool looking metal gizmo that lodges inside the arm.

But, alas, her legs have lost their stringing hooks.
Now I have to invent something as I cannot duplicate those metal gizmos and I do not have a metal fabrication shop down the street.

So this is my creation made from a sawed off nail and some wire. It will get secured across the leg opening with a couple dabs of glue.

The  new leg hooks work and Dorothy is back together.

She has also has had some dental work for her loose teeth and got her sparse eyelashes plumped up.

She is ready to go home.

Tedums needs new paws

This is "Tedums".
He is a well-loved vintage teddy bear. He is made of mohair and has glass eyes.

He has arrived with a request for new paw pads.

Now one could go to the local fabric store and buy new fabric to make him some paw pads.
But brand new fabric paws would look out of place on an old bear.
So it is better to use old fabric that blends in with his time-worn mohair.
If you do not have old fabric you can tea stain new fabric to give it an aged look.

Here is Tedums with his 'new' paws.
They are made from scraps of antique fabric that, with a bit of tea staining, suited him nicely.

A reborn doll gets her arm fixed

This is 'Crystal', a reborn doll who has come to get her arm fixed.
What is wrong with her arm?

Well, there is a wire sticking out of it!

Wire is not typical inside a reborn's body......this could be interesting......

Here is the usual start to a doll repair.
Off with the head!

Only to find the wire twisted up inside the body.
Was this wire twisted like that originally? Or did it get like that with lots of play?


Further dissection (ie stuffing removal and poking around) reveals that the wire originally stretched from arm to arm and had broken where it was sticking out of the arm.
I still don't know the purpose for all those twists inside the body but once I extracted the broken wire remnant from the lower arm, straightened out the wire,  bent over the broken end and wrapped it.....I got this:

Enough wire to stretch from arm to arm again but without twists in the body.
That should work?

Wire re-positioned down the arm, Stuffing re-stuffed and head attached again.
Many reborn dolls have their head and limbs attached with plastic zip ties and this one was no different.
She is ready to go home.

The dark blotches on her are from leached dye from her owners clothing. She will go home to try applications of Benzoyl Peroxide to remove them. This is an ingredient in some acne creams and it is quite useful to remove unwanted color..... but beware, it will remove color from your clothes and towel so be careful what it comes in contact with!

Ella gets a new body

Ella has arrived with a request for a new body....she does have some noticeable body problems!

Her cloth body will be replaced and she will get a bath too.

Here is Ella taken apart.
She has had a bath and her old cloth body is ready to pattern a new one.

Well, here is a new body partly made.
But then I found our local fabric store had some peach fabric.....closer to Ella's original body color.
So it will get washed and used instead.

Ella now sports a new peach coloured body.
She is ready to go home.

But, uh oh....she does not fit into the box she arrived in now. With her reconstruction and a bit of plumping, the Oh Henry shipping box is too small for her.
Time to look for a new travelling box!