The first step, for me, is to make working drawings. These drawings are done to scale to get a template from which to build the actual doll. (Once I figure out how to get the blog interface to play nice, I will upload the sketches. )

The first sketch (front view) took a while. About 3 hours, I think. It has been a while since I have done a drawing like that and I have never done one in such detail. The skull was the trickiest part. I had never really paid that much attention to the structure of faces before. I am getting better at noticing it, but after completing the sketches, I keep looking at faces on TV and seeing skulls! Once that was completed, I took a layer of trace and sketched an overlay of muscle and fat to get a look at how the finished doll might look. That part was the fast part.

Then, there was some experimenting with makeup, coloring, and hair to see if that face would work with the concept I had in mind. (More trace paper!) I did not really experiment too much with that for this project, so that was also fast. 

Once I was okay with all of that and decided to proceed with the skeleton I had , I sketched the side view of the skeleton. That took 2 hours, which is better than the 3 hours I originally estimated it would take. 

And that is good enough to get working on the body, though, in the future, I do want to make a scan of the side view and flip it. That would make it easier to remember to make opposing pairs of bone. Or if I could find my roll of trace paper, I could do the side view on the trace paper, and then flip the trace paper over. A back view of the pelvic bone and the shoulder girdle would be nice, too. 

Remember what I was saying about timing during the last post?

Same thing happened with the bag I made to put the bear in for storage. I thought I could cut it in one piece, finish up the long edge with a simple casing and then have two short side seams and be done in 2 hours.

Of course, that did not happen.

Instead, I ended up cutting one piece, but I had to cut it into two. Then I eventually decided to make a simple casing, but finish it up with grommets, which decided to be difficult. Then the silk was shredding like mad, so I decided to make french seams, which meant sewing all the seams twice. My simple little bag ended up taking about 4-6 hours. 

Then I decided that the bear needed a neck ruff, which i made out of ribbon, wide lace and pearl beads. I wanted it to take me an hour, ao I figured that it would actually take me 3. And it did. Hurrah for accurate estimates.  

I wanted to ship out the bear today, but all the post offices close to me are closed. I will have to wait until Monday. D:

I started this year by making a teddy bear for someone very dear to me. It has been a long time since I made a bear, and I did not expect it to take too long, so of course, it has taken me about twice as long.
Still, I am very glad that I started with the bear first and not any of the doll projects in my head for a few reasons.

1. The bear will be done first, so my dear one will get it sooner.
2. I learned a lot about how my approach to crafting has changed.
3. I (re)learned important lessons about planning a project.

Reason #1 is pretty self-explanatory. Because I was working on the bear while I was waiting for my tools and supplies to come in, I did not not have any other projects to distract me so the turn around time was pretty good.

Reason #2 requires a little backstory. The last time I made dolls and bears was when I was a teenager.  Back then, I had no patience for fine detail or finishing. By that point, I just wanted to get it done already! Of course, the end result often looked sloppy or did not hold last long. At the time I was making those things, I did not expect them to last long. However, when I decided to get back into dollmaking, I rounded up all my old dolls and took photos. It was so amazing and weird to see that these items I made still existed after 10 or more years. It was also appalling to see how poorly some of them have aged!

The upside is that, when I was constructing the bear, I was thinking about things like finishing and durability. Since, I had done this kind of thing before, I was also able to think about assembly and plan ahead, which saved me a lot of grief. There was still some grief. I was working with velvet, and it was slippery and required much pinning and basting so that the pieces would not slip on my sewing machine (which is new-to-me and runs like a dream). Even then, there were still a few limbs that had to be unpicked entirely and I made a few mistakes, but I am very happy with the end result. It looks handmade, and definitely has personality, but it is not sloppy and it feels solid.

What did I learn about general project planning?

1. To realistically assess the amount of time a project requires,  I should take the amount of time I think it should take me to a particular step and multiply it by 2. That is how much time it will take to do it the right way. Then, I should multiply that number by 2 to allow for mistakes, interruptions, illness, etc.
2. Think ahead. How are the pieces going to attach to one another? How are you going to finish the pieces? Does that require any special prep work? When will that kind of thing be easiest? (Hint: the answer is not when I am almost done and I have everything neatly detailed and all the fussy bits in place)
3.  Always have extra on hand: extra thread, extra needles, extra fabric, extra hardware bits, etc. I will lose, miscut, run out of, or break something in the middle of a project, and I will waste time trying to hunt down, repair or replace it. Never, in any of my artsy adventures, have I ever said "oh, I bought too much/many of that."
4. Shallow, small storage containers are my friend. "In the bottom of one of those big bins" is the worst location for a small tool or piece.
5. Quality tools all the way. I have tools that I bought for a few corset projects that were quite handy for this teddy bear. As did my pliers. I was ever so glad that I had them on hand and that they survived even me (possibly mis-)using them.

Hello! 

Welcome to my blog. I wanted a space to ramble about my projects and take detailed notes on my works-in-progress. Also, I have found some of the dollmaking blogs online to be really fascinating and so very helpful, so it is my hope that by blogging my process, I can help others the way that I have been helped-- even if it turns into entry after entry of "oh, whatever you do, do not do this! I can prove that it turns out poorly!"  (Also, there are only so many email drafts I can create saving all those links to tutorials that might come in handy someday before it gets awkward and unwieldy.)

Fantastic Forms is one part description, one part mission statement. "Fantastic" is generally defined as:1. Existing in or constructed from fantasy; seemingly only possible in fantasy; 2. Wonderful; marvelous; excellent; extraordinarily good or great 


The first definition is a description. Many of the projects I am working on are inspired by mythology and fantasy and deal with forms that are not generally found in the physical world.

The second definition is the mission statement or aspiration. I am aiming, through style and execution, to create pieces that are truly fantastic in the second sense of the word. 

Anyway, that is what this place is about. I hope you will stick around!