Historical Folk Doll with Primitive Hands (Old HFD #1) - Features a 14" doll with primitive hands. The fingers are individual, but not as hard as it would seem if the special technique is followed (uses hemostats - sold on Supplies page) which enables sewers to turn tiny things right side out with ease. Or, a simpler alternative hand pattern is supplied. She has a dyed mohair wig and elaborate clothing with high button shoes. Worth the extra work to make her.

Pattern Only $18 Add to Cart

Historical Folk Doll Flat Bottom Mammy (Old HFD #3) - No collection of American folk dolls would be complete without some Black dolls. This one is a 13" flat-bottomed Mammy-style doll whose ample figure is dressed in old reds. Her cookie jar shape is accomplished with a wooden base supplied with the pattern and her exaggerated facial features are embroidered.

Pattern Plus (includes her wooden base) $20 Add to Cart

Historical Folk Dolls ~ Home-Made Raggedy Girl and Boy (Old HFD #6)- This used to be two kits and now both dolls are combined in one set. These 14" dolls represent the many home-made versions of the famous Raggedy Dolls that were made and sold commercially beginning in 1918.

Pattern $18 Add to Cart

NOTE: See the Supplies page for more of this yarn hair and buttons for eyes to make additional dolls. (Still available)

Historical Folk Doll ~ Primitive Doll with Hand-stitched Hair - This is a 15" primitive doll originally designed as a class doll exemplifying some of the most important details of primitive cloth dolls. The techniques to make her are ones I have been evolving toward since beginning with cloth dolls many years ago. When the instructions are followed, she will genuinely look old and worn. Her hand-stitched hair and simple face and stitched fingers make her a pleasurable doll to make and her dress, slip, tucked pantaloons and easy shoes are very much what may have been done in the 1800's.

Pattern $18 Add to Cart

ANTIQUE DOLLS - DOLLS TO MAKE WITH VINTAGE FABRICS
This doll with two dress variations has always been just a pattern, but for as long as they last, I have made them kits with real vintage fabrics. This is for one of my all-time favorite dolls and the reason for the title is that I wanted a simple doll in a scale small enough to use vintage scraps, but large enough to be easy to make. At times I have taken some of my long collected vintage indigo blues make up kits for just one doll (your choice from the two variations in the patterns), but no longer have such treasured scraps. However, having a hoarded stash of reproductions, I have made up kits that will make both dolls and include already pre-aged body fabric, indigo blue and brown dress fabrics, trims, hair fabric, colored leg fabric and vintage pearl buttons plus some of my last hoarded tan stuffing (remember that great stuff?) to make a complete kit for both charmingly sweet and easy dolls. Highly recommended if you are just beginning.

Pattern $18 Add to Cart

THE NEW YORK DOLL - This was the first of the discontinued Historical Folk Doll Series of Kits to become an enhanced pattern (means it has more stuff than just paper). Includes the same complete patterns, instructions, gift tag, face stencil and tiny turning tube for fingers plus her little ring (besides her unusual embroidered face and hair, this well known doll also wears a tiny ring on one of her fingers). You supply fabrics, stuffing, notions.

Pattern plus $20 Add to Cart

A DOLL FOR DISNEY - In early 2001, I was asked to do a doll for the Disney movie, "Tuck Everlasting." The doll originally was to have an important role and my mission was to make three of the same doll - the first was to be worn, but as if in the present time of the movie (1820); the second was to be very tattered and look as if she were 100 years old and the last was to be used in a house fire into which Sissy Spacek, playing the mother, runs to rescue the doll because it is so dear to her. When the movie finally came out in fall of 2002, the doll is only a prop on a shelf, but for me it did not really matter because I considered the challenge so great that when I finished with more success than I felt possible, that became my real reward. The real task for me was not just making a rag doll of the times with the qualifications handed to me (only brown for colors and real hair), but to create one which clearly had the stamp of endearing on her and to take my aging techniques into new territory such that it would be hard to really tell that the doll was not old. Her reception at shows proved I was right, for everyone was drawn to her even when they knew nothing of her connection to a movie. Favorite details are her wispy hair, sweet countenance and her worn shoes. Kits and finished dolls no longer available.

Patterns and Instructions are available (includes face stencil) $18 Add to Cart

Historical Folk Doll Set of 3 Dolls 17" Izannah Walker Folk Type
(Old HFD #10) - There are few cloth dolls with quite as much charm and presence as the dolls made by Izannah Walker in the last half of the 1800’s. The dolls themselves are so rare and costly that only a few museums and very fortunate individuals have them, but they are certainly at the top of any list of early cloth dolls that admirers wish to see. Her dolls had heads that were molded in two parts in cloth and then covered with a cotton stockinette, for which Izannah is the first woman to hold a US patent (obtained in 1873), I felt that this collection would be incomplete without a simple one that could be sewn at home from patterns and easy techniques. My version adopts the very round head which is sewn of stockinette with applied ears and a raised stitched nose. The demure countenance is accomplished by special pattern transfers and painting techniques to make it easy for non-painters to achieve the look. Body construction is like most real Izannah’s with the same hour-glass shape torso, separately attached thumbs and painted on shoes. Of course the clothing is also typical of the times in which these dolls were originally made. The cat is a period toy sometimes seen in primitive portraits of children from which it is thought that Izannah took her painting style.

Pattern Set 3 $20 Add to Cart
Finished Dolls no longer available.