Category Archives: Dolls

Shona & Amy’s Wedding Cake

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Shona and Amy’s wedding was as wonderfully unique, warm and loving as they are.  My friend Terry and I made their cake as a gift and they graciously left the details to us. We have worked together on many projects, including the Woods Hole Village Quilt. For the cake, we were free to create our own vision of our friends and decided to feature our local corner of southeastern Cape Cod. On Friday, Terry and I got together at her house to work on the decorations. The cake was going to have a raspberry filling, so Terry needed to cut the large cake sheets in half. Using a setup her husband Keith devised for the purpose, she sliced the cake with a saw rigged with a banjo wire.

I busied myself cutting parts out of fondant, while Terry spread the filling and spread the frosting.  I combed a wavy texture with a pointy toothed triangular tool. Then, I sprinkled blue shimmer dust on the waves through a fine strainer.

Woods Hole’s peninsula and the Elizabeth Islands were made of fondant and covered with green shimmer dust.  I spelled out Buzzard’s Bay and Vineyard Sound, using cute little cookie cutters. I also made the wedding couple’s house out of marzipan.

We positioned the boat and dolls heading southwest along the chain of Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard’s Bay

Terry piped the cake edges with frosting and we started to add decorations. I had made a fondant banner with the wedding date 2 days ahead and it had dried enough to crack in places, so we had to do some patching.

Terry had found some worm shaped candies, which we used to make a wavy border pattern on the lower tier.

Terry fixed the banner, while I added candy fish, lobsters and octopi. This project was becoming more fun by the minute!

We made a candy stone wall along the base of the cake.

And added some walnut-shell sailing dinghies and another candy wall. Beeswax holds the masts on place.

Here’s the sea gull’s view.

And yesterday, Shona and Amy saw their cake for the first time. What a special day!

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Wedding Cake figures

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My friends, Shona and Amy are tying the knot this Saturday. Their wedding is looking to be more of a do-it-yourself type than the formulaic extravaganzas I’ve been to lately.  Their’s will be much looser, with lots of friends helping out, which reminds me of 30 years ago, when my husband and I got married.  My friend Terry and I volunteered to make their wedding cake. Terry has already baked the cake and she and I will be spending friday working on the decorations. We’ve been planning this cake for months and I’ll try to remember to take pictures as we add the personal touches. I just finished making Shona and Amy dolls to fit a toy boat, which will be on the cake.

To start, I found a wooden toy boat of the right size and type at Bella Luna Toys. I then made two 3 1/2 inch tall pipe cleaner doll forms, the same way as explained in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk.

This is what the dolls look like undressed. I wrapped some cotton batting around their middle sections and sewed small beads for breasts, which show that these are women, not girls. Just adding stuffing doesn’t look natural and the beads appear more true to life when they are clothed. I started using beads for breasts a few years ago, when I made my self-portrait, because I wanted to show maturing over time. See my piece, Self-Portrait: A Personal History of Fashion here.

Then, I dressed them in clothing that I thought fit their style and personality.

Now that the dolls had heads, they needed a trip to the hairdresser. I put glue on the top and sides of the bead heads and then draped felt over, using pins to keep the felt in place while it dried. I started devising this wig making technique when I made all of those dolls for my Self-Portrait.

After the glue dried, I cut the felt in the back to conform to the round head and glued the felt to the back. Pins hold the felt in place while it dries. I felt like giving the dolls little fashion magazines to read like women in salons, who sit and wait with curlers or foil origami on their heads.

I sewed the seams together and blanket stitched around the felt edges, using flower thread, which is thicker than embroidery floss. DMC discontinued making flower thread, which is too bad, because it’s great stuff. I still have some of this golden wheat color that worked for both Amy and Shona’s hair.

Shona has curls, so I twisted the thread around the needle and pulled it through, like loose french knots. I really felt like a hairdresser then.

Amy’s doll had straight hair.

I made a flag with their names that would fly above the dolls on the boat. Wire along the flag’s edge helps keep its shape.

I painted the boat and sewed the finished dolls to tiny screw eyes on the cabin. Amy loves to fish, so I made her a fishing rod and attached a bead fish.

Shona, who is a bit of a show-off, is ready at the bow, holding on to the flag pole. I’ll let you know how the launching goes.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Doll Collection: small wooden folk dolls

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This set of standing wooden folk dolls are a mystery to me. I found them in a box of other miscellaneous stuff, while cleaning out my parents’ house. They are small, about 2″ tall and would make fun cake decorations. Helen, a fellow blogger (here) who knows a lot about souvenir dolls, thinks they may be Hungarian or Polish because of the red boots and dark hair.

Since Helen pointed out the red boots, I’ve been flooded with memories of seeing Hungarian dance performances as a child. Besides wearing eye-catching red boots, the dancers’ costumes had full puffy petticoats under their skirts. I also remember seeing the women’s long braids flying out as they twirled. My parents were avid international folk dancers and would bring us to watch and participate in folk dance events. I don’t remember seeing these dolls as a child, but their red boots triggered a memory.

Wee Folk centerpiece

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In the last post, I mentioned making a centerpiece for the Pocketful of Posies book release party at Highfield. Since I forgot to take pictures of the finished setup, here are some shots taken during the construction phase. Many of the dolls were models for projects in my how-to book Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects and were unearthed for this event.

I arranged driftwood and logs that the wee folk could sit on and climb up. Old, dried up bayberry bushes, with their compact spread of small branches make good wee folk scale trees.

I drilled holes in the wood for small screw eyes, which served as anchors for the dolls. I felt like a prison guard, shackling their tiny ankles and tying their waists to the screw eyes with wire. But, it was to protect them from easy escape into the hands of big folk.

One vertical log needed a rope ladder, so I gathered some possible materials; jute rope and twine, old fishing line, a woven wooden slat place mat .

I selected the fatter jute rope and pulled out a wooden slat from the place mat. To make the rungs, I fed broken off wood sections through the rope and lashed them in place with an improvised knot. I wished we had learned knot tying in girl scouts. You never can tell when you’ll need outdoor survival skills!

Here’s Jack climbing up the finished rope ladder. See Jack climbing the bean stalk here.

Here are some characters from Felt Wee Folk.

Princess from “Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects”

Jester from “Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects”

Hansel & Gretel and the Witch from “Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects”

And a grandpa with his grandchildren. It sure was fun playing with these dolls again and bringing them on a short outing to my exhibit at Highfield.

Dolls from Istanbul

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A family I know from Woods Hole went on a trip to Turkey this summer. Deb sent me this series of photos of a doll shop in Istanbul. Here is her daughter Celeste standing alongside the amazing display of felt dolls. Among the conservatively dressed female figures, I can see some whirling dervish dancers in white as well as some pretty wild-looking felt caps.

Please Note: Mara from Ankara, Turkey just wrote a comment and said, “These are actually made in Central Asia — in Uzbekhistan, if I remember correctly — but they are sold quite widely in Turkey”.

There are dressed up rabbits, mothers with babies hanging on, and moustached short squat men. Thanks for sharing these, Deb!

Wee Folk: Pearl & Urchin

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I took Pearl and Urchin out for a climb up a beech tree. They patiently waited and stayed still as I took their picture. We were all quiet as I played with my camera, adjusting the aperture and speed settings.

I suppose you could call Pearl and Urchin “retired”, a term used in the collecting business for sold out. They were the models for a Ltd. Edition and there are 25 other pairs out in the world. After a few years spent sealed in a plastic bag, I thought they could use some fresh air.