I've been trying to "find my voice" as a dollmaker recently. Mainly I've been mulling over my doll heads. The head and face of a Waldorf doll give the doll its soul. A cute doll face draws you in, triggers those mommy hormones to hug and cuddle, and makes you want to be little again so you could make that doll your best friend. A well made head is also the best way to judge the overall quality in the production of a doll. There is something endearing about a lumpy, lopsided and funky first-timer head. My first doll heads were just as bad as anyone else's, and I cherish them for the memory of how far I've come.
The "sausage head" issue was the major problem with my first heads. You know... when the head looks less like a POM juice jar and more like a Tootsie Roll. That cylindrical shape happens when the wool has not been compacted enough in the head ball. My solution, which I haven't seen anyone else do (or at least admit to doing), is to felt the ball inside the head. Not until it's completely hard, just until it's firm with some give. I think not enough firmness in the head stuffing is the culprit with all those mushy looking Waldorf dolls you see on Etsy.
Uniformity of shape and size is another key to good heads. When you make more than one doll at a time, as I do, you run into consistency issues. If an event where I'll be selling my dolls is coming up, I'll sit down and make a bunch of heads. Head making in bulk is a rather meditative experience, a lot like knitting. You can sit and just veg while your hands churn out a bunch of wool balls. My problem is a gradual drift towards larger and larger balls. When the dolls are lined up on a table display, it looks really unprofessional if they all have different size heads. So consistent head size is important to me. I use a copper wire twisted into a hoop to test my ball size as I make them. I keep checking the ball against the hoop as I add wool, until it just snugs up against it. The hoop also helps with making the balls evenly round.
Floppy head, oh, those darn floppy heads. I struggled with droopy droppy heads for a while. This becomes especially annoying when the doll has luscious, abundant hair. Wool yarn can get heavy! And a doll without a solid neck will flop around disturbingly when carried by a child. Ew. I finally figured out what the problem is, the sleeve of skin fabric that comes down from the neck needs to be sewn closed at the bottom, pulling the fabric taut. That also prevents the whole "ghost neck" thing (wrinkles in the head skin fabric where the head meets the body, like someone wearing a sheet tied at the neck as a ghost costume).
The tying of the head to give it that sculpted shape (I call this the "skull" stage) is very personal. It's funny how almost every set of instructions for doing it you'll see; online, in books, in classes; will be almost exactly the same.... Yet the individual finesse of the dollmaker makes their dolls distinct and unique. It's in the tying of the head where craft becomes art. The proportion, symmetry, and overall "rightness" of the head is decided in this one pivotal step. I started by making heads in the classic Kruse style, with the forehead and cheek bumps about the same size, and an overall shape that was slightly tall and narrow. This was how the instructions I'd read said to do it, but it just didn't look right to me. Maybe German kids look different from Irish kids, but that style just didn't look childlike enough to me. I started making my heads rounder, with the eyeline tied up higher to give them bigger cheeks. Suddenly they started looking cute! I found that a simple, round, big cheeked face works best for the standard small bunting baby dolls.
The nice thing about those small baby dolls is they don't need much work on the face to make them cute. A little bead under the skin fabric for a nose, two seed stitches for eyes and a loose straight stitch for a mouth and you're done! Just precious.
Full size Waldorf dolls are more challenging. For one thing, they require greater skill at embroidery. Bigger head means bigger eyes, so a single seed or chain stitch won't suffice. You have to be good at embroidery, something I at first was not (!), to make nice doll eyes. And there's the choice of simply embroidering the eyes, like a Kruse doll, or accenting the embroidery with textile paint, as with the Sunnhild dolls. I have a penchant for Japanese Anime, so dolls with BIG EYES always draw me in. But little pea eyes on a simple baby face can be endearing also.
How those little nubby noses were made was a complete mystery to me at first. The whole "round the clock" technique for nose making came as an epiphany! I first saw a version of that technique in a Art Doll making book (cloth dolls made for grown ups), and totally thought it could be adapted for Waldorf dolls. Well, low and behold, once you know WHAT to search for, i.e. "waldorf doll instructions nose", Google provides. I've started to become enamored of the flat noses some dolls have. My noses are just too round and perky. I've decided that bigger noses are better, they make the doll look more cartoon-like. I like the horizontal ellipse shape, which give them a bit of a puppy dog feel.
Genetics have to be a big factor in what we think is a cute doll face. Some dolls out there I look at and just go yuck. Others, make me want to bow down in reverence to the dollmaker! My baby dolls especially turn out looking like my kids. I don't MEAN to do it, it just happens. Just like the head shape, the facial features are going to be an artistic (and often unconscious) statement by the dollmaker. I've been struggling with what I want my "style" of doll face to be. I know what I like and I know I can do it. But then there is the mysterious journey of the making and all the serendipitous events that occur along the way. I think I just need to sit down and make a bunch more dolls at one time. They'll turn out how THEY want, and that will be my style.
Genetics have to be a big factor in what we think is a cute doll face. Some dolls out there I look at and just go yuck. Others, make me want to bow down in reverence to the dollmaker! My baby dolls especially turn out looking like my kids. I don't MEAN to do it, it just happens. Just like the head shape, the facial features are going to be an artistic (and often unconscious) statement by the dollmaker. I've been struggling with what I want my "style" of doll face to be. I know what I like and I know I can do it. But then there is the mysterious journey of the making and all the serendipitous events that occur along the way. I think I just need to sit down and make a bunch more dolls at one time. They'll turn out how THEY want, and that will be my style.
