New hair for a vintage Inuit doll

 This is 'Shelley'. She has arrived to get new hair.

She was originally sold in 1967 as a souvenir doll for Canada's centennial. The dolls came either dressed as an "Eskimo" or an "Indian Boy".

She had had her original hair replaced by a wig. Unfortunately the wig style does not suit her heritage. She should have black straight hair.

Once the wig comes off you can see that this doll started life with rooted hair.

Here she is with the rooted hair replaced.

The beheaded tiger

 

This is 'JT'. He has arrived to get his head sewn back on.

Actually his head has already been sewn back on by his owner, but her stitching work is starting to give way.

JT has a history of getting beheaded with a pair of scissors!

Here you can see the grievous injury.

A better view.

Poor JT needs to get the white stitches removed in order to have a more permanent repair done.

He will get beheaded yet again.

Here is JT after his owner's stitches were removed.

He has had most of his stuffing removed and has had a bath.

Working from his inside surface and using threads that are the same colours as his fur allows the repairs to become almost invisible.

Here the yellow fur pieces that make up his belly have been stitched together.

As JT will likely go back home to some rough and tumble play, this new seam should get strengthened.

This is one way of strengthening.

A length of twill tape has been sewn over the repair.

Here is the outside of the repaired yellow fur.

Now to continue the same repair methods around his neck to piece together his orange fur.......

JT is back together!

His wounds are hard to see now.

Another boudoir doll.

 

This boudoir doll arrived with her sister. She is equally soot stained and her silk face is shredding.

She has also lost her hair.

She gets a bit of freshening up by removing the shredded silk and repairing her right eye.

Looks like she still need some extra blush!

A wig helps.

Her clothes are original and needed no work.

Silk faced boudoir doll

This is a boudoir doll that has arrived for a spruce up.

She is made of cloth and has a gorgeous, detailed outfit.

Old silk is prone to shattering as it ages. The fibres break down due to the damaging effects of production methods that were used years ago.

This doll's silk face is a stocking type of silk and has shattered quite widely.

The face had 2 layers of silk so the top layer was removed. That revealed the 2nd layer to be faded and still a bit tattered but her appearance has improved already.

Another issue is her overall colour.

Under her clothes is the original peach colour of the silk stocking material that made her skin. The exposed silk has faded and has greyed.

Her overall grey staining is unusual and looks very much like smoke/soot. After asking her owner about her history I find out she spent much of her life in a house heated with coal. They grey makes sense now. But, if coal heating did this to a cloth doll, what did it do to the lungs of the human house occupants?

The grey hair was not originally grey. It was a pale blonde. You can still see the original colour under the stained hair.

But, there is no safe way to clean the grey from this doll. She keeps her grey hair.

This is as good as I can get her. She has had a skin graft to the tip of her nose and another larger one to hide her discoloured chest.

Flirty eyes

 This is an antique German doll that has what are called 'flirty eyes'. They move side to side and they also sleep.

Flirty eyes like this 'sleep' by having metal eyelids move over the eyes when the doll lies down.

But, this doll's eyes do not work well.

Her inside mechanism.

It is hard to see but there are two weighted mechanisms in there. One moves the eyes from side to side and one moves the metal eyelids over the eyes to make the doll 'sleep'.

What was missing from this mechanism was a string that suspends the upper weight which makes they eyes move side to side. The string is secured at the front of the head by a little blob of plaster.

In this case the string had broken so replacing it made the mechanisms work properly again.

She has a couple other issues to address. A hand missing some fingers and a caved in belly button with a previous repair.

All fingers are intact now and she has had her torso patched and her hair curled.

Another Barbara Ann Scott doll

 Another Barbara Ann Scott doll arrives to be restored.

At first glance she doesn't look too bad?

But her paint has aged with a lot of crazing.

There are several deep cracks.

The original dress is tattered.

Her skates are gone.

She has lost eyelashes, has a split around her eye and has bubbled and lifting paint.

One could still argue that, overall she is in half decent shape and should be left alone. But, I have agreed to renew her.

This is what she looks like once all of her lifting paint has been removed.

Old paint contains lead so her paint removal gets done outside with a mask.

These are her eyes.

They need a cleaning, some touch up paint and new eyelashes.

While I wait for decent weather to do the doll's paint work, I am playing around with how to replicate the dress.

The original dress has a sheer blue fabric printed with dots and bows over a white lining. The original sheer fabric is shredding, stained and discoloured.

So, here is option one with a sheer blue fabric that I have painted a similar pattern on. Looks hopeful?

All her bits have been refreshed and she is ready to get put back together.

Her original wig is rather messy.

So it gets a combing out.

And then it gets set in curlers.

Her final look.

Bad cat!

 

This doll has arrived to get a new body.

Her original cloth body was shredded by a cat.

Which means there is nothing left to get a pattern from to make a new body. There are many, many body shapes and sizes....how do I make a pattern?

Fortunately being a packrat has some advantages and, out of a box of parts, comes pieces of a cloth body that were made for Ella, a previous patient. She was about the same size so now I have a pattern!

And then a new body.

Hopefully the cat will not shred this one?

Some restringing work.

These dolls, along with their bigger sister, just need restringing.

Big sister needs restringing too.

Done.