Helen Kish's Peyton

Helen Kish's Peyton

 When I bought my first Chrysalis doll, the two dolls I was choosing between were Olivia Primavera and Waterfall Fantasy Wren. In the end I chose Wren, and decided I would only buy the fourteen inch dolls. Two sizes would be too much. Too many outfits to make. Too many shoes to buy. This is the little face that changed my mind about my one size only policy. Another doll I had to have.

 

 Straight out of the box Peyton is adorable! I don't usually like dolls with open mouthed smiles. All to often they look simpering of false like a child beauty queen. But Peyton's smile doesn't look false, he actually looks like a little kid having fun. He looks like he'd be cheeky and get up to mischief, probably by accident. He looks like he has a personality.

YAY! I've finally arrived!

 It doesn't show very well in the photos but his black stretch pants have a little pintuck up the centre front and back, like real ones often do. This is a nice touch, but does mean you need to take a little more care when posing him. You can't see the joints so you're working blind and then once you've got him how you want him, you have to rearrange the tucks so they're straight - without changing his pose! It's a little tricky but not a huge pain in the neck. Also the waist is elastic so there are no tricky little fastenings to fiddle with or add extra bulk.

 If I'm standing side on, nobody will notice if my tucks are straight or not.

 The sweater is adorable! It's made of a knit fabric without any fleece on the inside, with yellow knit cuffs that are lightly ribbed. The penguin on the front is machine embroidered and nearly as cute as Peyton himself.

 

And in the back it fastens with an invisible zip instead of the snaps that all my other Chrysalis dolls' clothes have. There's also a little hook and eye at the neckline. That doesn't really show in the picture.

There isn't anything under his sweater, not that I expected there to be. Under his trousers he wears white knit underpants with picot trim along the waist and plain bound legholes. He also has a pair of white ribbed socks, that come to mid-calf if you put his heels where the shaping for his heels is. I say it that way because the feet are too big for his feet, I think they'd fit the 14" dolls better; and if you put his toes in the toes of the socks, they come up to his knees.

In a little plastic bag taped to the side of Peyton's box are his accessories.

Peyton's mittens hat and scarf.

They're all nicely made out of  knit fabric. But I took one look at the mittens and almost had a panic attack! The 12" dolls have quite splayed hands, not as bad as a kewpie doll, but certainly not something I wanted to have to put tiny little mittens onto!

NOT something I want to have to force into a tiny little mitten!

Actually I shouldn't have worried, I can now say from experience that getting the mittens on is easy as pie! . . . getting them off made me worry I was going to rip his hand off.

 Anyway here's Peyton in his full outfit

I prefer it when the scarf doesn't cover up the penguin.

 He looks amazing but I found I kept trying to keep the tassel behind him, because it's a little out of scale

Fear my giant tassel of doom!

His shoes, I have to say, are fantastic! I know they just look like black blobs in my pictures but that's my incompetence not the boots! These are great. 

They're made of a black velvety fabric with a coppery overprint, sort of like a snakeskin, that varies in it's intensity. In some places it's a bright copper with a very clear pattern, in other places it's barely there. The soles are black plastic with molded tread, the molding is on the sides and the backs as well.

 They fasten with laces (baby ribbon) but the little strap across the top velcros in place too. And they're lined with thin black vinyl. (Possibly this is just the backing to the fabric they're made from.)

The main concern I had before I got this doll was his face. In the prototype pictures both Peyton and Piper have eyes a shade of icy blue that I was worried would be quite creepy in real life, like something from "Children of the damned". I was also a tiny bit concerned that on the actual dolls the freckles would be darker, bigger or just plain blotchy. I shouldn't have worried. The actual dolls eyes are a lovely colour. A light greyish blue with a faint touch of lavender and the freckles are beautifully and delicately painted. Actually after being worried that the freckles would be too obvious, I'm now a little disappointed that they're not more obvious. As I write this Peyton is sitting on my printer, arms length away and I can see the freckles on his nose - just, and I wouldn't see the ones on his cheeks at all if I didn't already know they were there. I will qualify that statement though by pointing out that my eyesight is absolutely rubbish.

I love Peyton and if it wasn't for the fact that I find sewing for boys incredibly boring (I can only make so many pairs of jeans and t-shirts before I will be forced to eat my own head from boredom) I would probably keep him as a boy. But I have other plans for this little lad. Over the next week or so he is going to be transformed into a girl! . . . That sounds more dramatic that it is, I'm going to rewig him and stick him in a dress. You could probably turn him into a girl without rewigging him but for some reason (and I really can't explain this) I really don't like bobbed hair on children. Actually with his current haircut he would make a great period girl from the 1930's or 1940's.

There may be a bit of delay in posts over the next month or so. I have almost no free time coming up and my entire household is already complaining they haven't got enough of my attention lately, but before you start thinking I'm neglecting real children to sew for dolls I will point out that the youngest person in my house is 26. 

My next post which will go up sometime in the next week will show Peyton's rewigging.