A box of doll pieces arrives....

This is often how dolls arrive into my workshop.

















They get inspected for missing parts and damage.

Then it is cleaning, repairing and restringing.

Time to get packed up for their return journey.

A drink and wet doll

Here is a small composition doll who arrived in pieces for re-stringing. She has a feature that was a novelty for a while. Check out her mouth....

There is a tube going from her mouth....

and down into her body. The tube has stiffened and broken with time.

The other end of the tube ends in her bottom.

This was a 'drink and wet' doll. Children could feed their doll a bottle of fluid which would travel through the tube and wet the diaper.
But this is a composition doll. Composition does not like water! Many of these dolls did not survive their feedings.
I will re-plumb the doll as I re-string her but no feedings allowed!

Cloth body renewal

This little doll has arrived to get her body issues addressed.

Her arms and legs keep falling off.

There is sticky stuff  embedded in the cloth around the top of each limb.

Off with her head. Out with her stuffing.
And here is the source of the problem.
The limbs were attached to the cloth body by elastic bands that have long since lost their elasticity. Elastic deteriorates by getting stiff and brittle or melting into a gooey mess. Unfortunately for me this elastic went the gooey route and now I have to get the sticky mess out of the cloth body.

Once totally unstuffed and the limbs are extracted from the goo, the cloth body can be soaked in a variety of cleaning solutions. It takes days and several changes of soaking solutions but the goo is gone and the body seems to be cleaning up nicely.

Now she has a cleaned body and her limbs are attached with cotton cording. No more rotting elastic!

Ready to go home......