New Helen Kish Dolls!

  So the new Helen Kish dolls for 2014 have been announced with pictures on her website. I'm not overly interested in Riley and Toots, they're too small for me. I prefer dolls I can do something for but sewing for dolls that small, I find I have to omit too many details which frustrates me.
 I am interested in the new Olivia and the super limited Shea.

Picture is from Kish and Company website

 I love the Olivia face. I love the fact that depending on the angle she can look petulant, or pensive, or simply bewildered. So many dolls have one of three expressions - blank, smiling, or half smiling; I like that Olivia is different.
 Olivia Tristesse has a sweet pink and white dress that manages to be pretty and feminine without being frilly and some great striped socks! I love striped socks. I'm not sure how useful her boots would be though, in the pictures they look like pink gumboots.
 I like Olivia Tristesse's red hair. That's one of the things I like about Helen Kish dolls, how many have red hair. In my family almost everyone has reddish blonde hair on my father's side and reddish brown hair on my mother's side, and as a child it always annoyed me that dolls never had reddish hair.

Shea Gamine from Kish and Company website.

 Shea Gamine is the other doll I like. I really like the Shea face sculpt. Of all the Chrysalis dolls, Shea's sculpt is in my opinion the most "dolly" sculpt. It has more beauty than character. And even though I like Olivia because of her character, just to be contrary I like the Shea sculpt for it's beauty. And I like this Shea in particular.
 Of the previous incarnations of Shea, two have been overtly girly and two have been fantasy characters. This Shea is a different take. Looking at the pictures, she looks like a bit of a tomboy, or a mischief maker. I can't help but imagine her as a child that's grown up in a circus or is the child of street performers. I love dolls that do that, make you imagine a story for them.
 This Shea is super-limited to 40 and only available to the Kish Collector Society members. But every one is going to have their eyes hand-painted and when you order her you get to choose the eye colour. That is kind of exciting to me. I love the way more and more doll companies are offering customisation options these days.

The downside of these great new dolls is I will probably never get to see either of them in person, my partner and I have started saving, which is seriously cutting into my doll funds. And I still need to get a Piper and a Bethany, because I don't have them yet. Piper is my priority, she is my absolute favourite, but I can't decide whether to buy the 2013 Big Sis Piper (not a huge fan of the white blonde hair) or to wait and see if another Piper is released. I can't help but worry that if I order the current Piper, they will release one I like better; but if I count on that happening the current Piper will sell out and I won't like the next one or there won't be another one.
First world problems of a doll collector.

Wilde Imagination's Patience as Glinda

Wilde Imagination's Patience as Glinda

 I had a problem with my Patience in Wonderland doll. I wanted to make her clothes, but I couldn't stand the idea of redressing her. I love Alice in Wonderland and I love my Patience in Wonderland. I kept putting off taking her clothes off to measure her for new ones and eventually I just had to accept that I really didn't want to do it.

 So I had to buy another Patience. (At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) There was simply no other choice.

 And now I have a Patience as Glinda. Actually she's been sitting in a box in my wardrobe for several weeks now, I just haven't had time to open her up. And luckily, I've never liked the Wizard of Oz (come on Dorothy is supposed to be like nine years old but she's clearly a full-grown woman, that's creepy.) so I'm not going to have any qualms about redressing her. But first, I thought I would share some pictures.

Can we get a little more pink over here?

 My first impression after I deboxed my Glinda was that she looked like the sort of thing a six-year-old girl would hallucinate after overdosing on fairy floss (cotton candy to you americans.) She is exceptionally puffy and fluffy and pink! And sparkly, but there was so much pink that I don't think I even noticed the sparkliness for several minutes. And the skirt is frankly enormous.

The dress is standing up by itself here!

 That dress! Seriously, it isn't the sort of thing I like, but I can't help being impressed and a little overwhelmed by it! The dress itself is made of some sort of light pink nylon taffeta with an overlay of palest (almost white) pink chiffon. The sparkly clusters are not glitter but more like tiny silver studs with some sort of oversized glitter pieces here and there and of course sequin stars. 

At the neck there's an attached silver star shaped ornament with rhinestones and a plastic like butterfly shape that's absolutely covered in iridescent glitter (and yes it sheds glitter). The sleeves fasten at the wrists with snaps, something I don't think I've ever seen before in a doll this small.

Layers and layers of skirt!

The skirt is made up of several layers so that the dress can actually stand up on it's own! Under the sheer sparkly layer is the taffeta of the dress itself which is lined in a fine pink net that gives it extra stiffness. Under these layers is a separate petticoat of a coarser white net.

Even the petticoat can stand up by itself!

And if that wasn't enough, when I took her dress off I discovered it had a little bustlelike attachment sewn into the waistband as well!

Just in case the rest of the dress wasn't frilly enough

The back of the dress is a little more subdued.

Normally I'd call this sparkly, but compared to the front it's positively somber.

Under the dress she wears pink glittery shoes with and elastic strap. They're cute, but not very interesting.

When she arrives her accessories are taped to the side of the box in a little plastic bag. Two little plastic bead bracelets, another glitter covered, butterfly cut-out (this one is threaded on ribbon to be worn as a neklace) and a wand. The bracelets are nice, but not really anything special. The glittery butterfly cutouts, I don't like. They look a little cheap compared to the rest of the outfit, they shed glitter which is not one of my favourite things and tying the necklace on nearly drove me insane.

Jewels fit for a. . . fairy?. . . witch? I'm not quite sure.

I was surprised by how heavy the wand was! It's a metal rod with the star and rhinestone thing from Glinda's neckline repeated on the top, except instead of rhinestones there's a large pearl. And from the weight it's clearly real metal. Actually the weight presented a bit of a problem. The wand comes with an attached poly band to tie it to Patience/Glinda's arm, but I found that unless I balanced it just right as soon as I let go of it, gravity would take over and the star would fall to knee level and Patience/Glinda would have a wand handle poking her in the face. The only way I could get her to look like she was holding it was to balance it on both of her forearms rather than her hands.

The wand and crown. Sounds like the name of an English pub.

The crown. . . I'm still not sure how I feel about the crown. I'm either impressed or disappointed. I can see what they were trying to do, and when it's on the doll, it looks how it's supposed to look. It fits in with the outfit and looks like the crown from the movie when the doll is wearing it. But when the doll isn't wearing it and you look at it by itself, it's kind of clumsy and blah. It's made from some sort of cloudy, translucent acrylic, and like the wand, surprised me with it's weight. It's absolutely covered in a fine, iridescent, glitter, I'm not sure if that is sprayed on or embedded in the plastic. Details are picked out in chunkier shedding glitter that's a little messily applied. There are little sequin stars again, and the rhinestone star again at the front and the lower edge is completely encircled in rhinestones. The rhinestones at the bottom are coming away in several places. And there's an attached poly chinstrap. Which is good. And bad.

The chinstrap is good because there is no way the crown would stay on without one. It's bad because once you put the weight of the crown on top of the dolls head, combined with the weight of all her hair and the weight of her already large head, Patience/Glinda's teeny tiny body is kind of crushed. This isn't an issue of artistic balance, the skirt's so big everything looks in proportion, it's a question of physics. Once Patience/Glinda has her crown on, it's really hard to get her to stand up, even with a stand. Her head kept tipping to one side so much that she would twist out of the stand, or one side of the stand would end up on her waist, the other side would be in her armpit. With the combination of the wand and the crown if you were the sort of person that likes to rearrange their dolls and change their poses frequently, Patience as Glinda would probably be the most frustrating doll in the world.

Lucky for me I am never going to put her in this outfit again, so I will never again have to do the crown and wand balancing act. The fully dressed doll looks amazing, the outfit is lovely, and detailed, and slightly overwhelming but not my thing at all, and the doll is great. My Patience in Wonderland arrived with her hair all squashed and weird, with Glinda that problem has been avoided by turning her head to one side in the box. Simple but effective. And I can't wait to see who else she might be.

A tiny face and a big house.

  Lately rather than sewing my attention has been fixed on doing my first bjd face-up and getting more work done on my dollhouse. I'm doing the face-up slowly, ridiculously slowly and I know it. I'll do a thin coat of pastels, spray with Mr Super Clear and then I'll leave it. Not until the spray dries, not even a couple of hours, but for days.
 I'm doing it this way for a couple of reasons. Firstly I don't want to rush myself and get either overly cocky or overly anxious - that is how I make mistakes. Secondly, I get crazy ideas when I'm working to do things I hadn't planned to do and I want to give myself time to think over whether they're necessary or a good idea or not. . . usually they're not. Thirdly I'm enjoying it, so I want it to take longer.
  Probably the biggest problem I'm having with it is lighting. The face looks very different depending on the light. In some lights it looks almost finished. In other lights it hardly looks started.

Dollmore Zihu under natural light.

Dollmore Zihu under warm electric light.

 How much more work her face needs, I'm not sure yet but she still needs lower eyelashes and I want to neaten her lips with a coat or two of water colours, and I want a little more shading on her upper eyelids. Other than that, I'm still undecided but throwing up a couple of ideas in my head.

The dollhouse is finally at a point where the end is in sight. I spent all day yesterday trimming and gluing in cornices (and I'm glad that's over!) and most of the interiors still need finishing touches and tidying up. There's only one set of french doors left to go in, which would have gone in on Tuesday, except I never bought handles for them so they're waiting for those to arrive. And then all that needs to be done is the roofing, railings for the balconies, a latticework trim around the foundation and the front stairs!

 Of course then all of the roof needs to be covered in thousands of tiny individual cedar shingles. . . but I'm trying not to think about that.

But it's starting to look like a real house, both inside and out, which is exciting!

It was turned the wrong way to be able to get a shot of the exterior today (and it weighs a tonne so I didn't want to turn it around) but I got a couple of interior shots. Not of the lounge though. . . the floor in the lounge is dusty and there are wood shavings and little balls of paper towel through it, and a sink lying on it's side; making it look like an abandoned derelict building.

 Blue and white kitchen. Taken on a weird angle because 

if I bent down the dog tried to climb on my knee and lick my face.

 The library. In the plans this is a bedroom but I wanted a library.

Taken from a weird angle so you can't see the gaping hole in the wall

where the roof will be.

A little of the derelict building feel. This is supposed to be a bathroom

but I decided to make it a bedroom, and the house only has running water

in the kitchen. (There isn't actual running water in the kitchen, it's imaginary 

running water, if that doesn't sound completely insane.)

One thing I've found interesting building the house is how I react to cutting myself. If you build a house from a plywood kit you will need to trim pieces sometimes, and you will cut yourself. And I will point out that every single time I have cut myself it has been just after I've thought "I really shouldn't be doing this this way, if I slip I'm going to cut myself." so it's my own fault. 

 But at first if I cut myself, I would inspect the wound, get a band-aid and if it was bad, for the rest of the day I would pull the band-aid off every hour or so to check on the wound. Now if I cut myself my only thought is to get a band-aid on as quickly and tightly as possible and then to spend the rest of the day checking the house for signs of blood! I think I could sever a finger and so long as I didn't bleed on the wallpaper, I really wouldn't care, I would just keep building.

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll still have enough fingers to type with for a while yet, but I can't promise anything.

Dreams and Dolls

 I've been sick with pneumonia for nearly a month now. It's nothing to worry about, it's a mild form, but it gets in the way of all my plans. In my loungeroom there's the doll house I've been working on for a year and a half, a Kish doll sitting in a box full of pattern pieces waiting to be dressed, and under a towel there's my new treasure - my first bjd; waiting for a face up. I have plans for new clothes for my Patience and I haven't even measured her yet. And every time I try to do anything, suddenly I'm tired and my head spins and I just know I'm going to mess it up!
 My bjd though, performed a miracle. The two boys that I live with, mostly ignore my dolls, if they acknowledge them at all it's to comment that they're creepy. This doll, on the other hand, they're both actually impressed by.
 I say it's my first bjd, but it will probably be my only bjd. I'm not patient enough for that kind of doll. I got a Dollmore Zihu and even though she took less than six weeks from the point of ordering to get here, that was the longest six weeks of my life! I'm not patient enough for that.
 I'm going to do her face up myself. Even though she's the first and only bjd I have ever seen in person. That's a little daunting. Every day I think of that and then think "You can't honestly be planning to do this! This is crazy!" But on the other hand another voice in my head says I can, I have years of experience doing pastel and water-colour portraits, which is probably the perfect practice for that kind of thing. I know I can do it. I also know that if I mess up, I can remove it. I'm still terrified of starting. Possibly because this is a doll I've dreamed of having for fifteen years.
  I always wanted a doll that was a good size to make clothes for that could be customised as Claudia from Interview with a vampire. Anyone that likes the story will probably at that point ask "From the book or the movie?" and all of them would be annoyed because my reply is neither. Somewhere between the two. Zihu is perfect because I wanted a doll that was firstly pale without being a fantasy shade, they pass as mortals in both the book and movie and no matter how bad the lighting was a Dollpire doll or something similar, isn't passing as mortal. Secondly and most importantly she had to have a child body. That means no boobies. I decided years ago she would have to be a bjd but when I started researching bjds I discovered that the ones with realistic child faces tend to have breasts, sometimes they're small but they're there. On the other hand the ones with the realistic child bodies tend to have unrealistic oversized heads with huge eyes. It came down to a choice between two dolls, Narsha (the main doll from the collection Zihu is from) and Zihu. I chose Zihu because whilst Narsha has a prettier more doll like face, Zihu has a strange personality to her face, I could easily imagine the mind of Claudia inside that face, whereas it would be easier to imagine Narsha without a mind.
 Meanwhile, while I'm here, I have to say I LOVE Dollmore! So far for my Kish girls I have bought bjd products from Alice's Collections (just shoes and they were great and a great price), Luts (wigs and shoes, I wasn't overly impressed by either. Wigs look and feel quite plasticy, shoes very average in every way except price which was high), Leeke (one wig, one pair of shoes - both excellent with qualifications. wig very frizzy but I wanted it to be and chose one that was, shoes were fantastic quality but would have preferred shoes of slightly lesser quality at a more reasonable price), and Dollmore (shoes and wigs.)
  Dollmore's wigs (I have three now) are consistently great quality, their shoes are well made, and their prices are really reasonable. Alice's has cheaper shoes but Dollmore has a bigger selection. Also they send free gifts. A lot of free gifts. My Zihu came with a pair of black lace tights, a pair of underpants, eyes (as expected), a wig, a headband (which will be perfect for her when I'm done), a bookmark, a russian doll keyring and a cute cat keyring. (Just to be fair Alice's Collections also sent me a free magic eraser with my order from them.) It made opening Zihu's box like Christmas!

I'm sorry I have no pictures today but this isn't a real post, just writing this because I can't sleep because of coughing. I should be well enough soon that I hopefully can get another proper post done.
 

Gwendolen's Fairy Tale Dress

Gwendolen (Helen Kish doll Shea) looking beautiful.

I got a Shea at the beginning of the year! I wasn't going to buy a Shea because even though she's my favourite face mould , all the Shea's seem to have quite high colouring which makes them look like they're wearing make-up. That's not a moral thing, a these dolls are too young for make-up thing, I don't care about that. (Although I kind of feel that way about the fact most of them come in high heels, I'm 35 and I don't wear high heels as often as these dolls do!) It's more of an issue of the versatility of the doll. A kid doll with natural colouring looks equally at home in play clothes, party clothes, period clothes, whatever clothes. A  kid doll that looks like she's wearing make-up looks a bit funny in casual clothes and the more casual the clothes the funnier she looks. But then someone was selling a "Third times a charm" convention Shea (and "Wren Sugar Plum") and well . . . you know how it goes, I have two new dolls! (Actually three new dolls, got a secondary market "Debut Phoenix" since then. And yes, I rewigged him as a girl.)

Anyway, I saw this dress on Pinterest :

Dress from LACMA. I've found this dress tagged as being 1880s and 1890s.

Not sure when it's actually from but I'm guessing the girl's parents were following the aesthetic movement.

And I HAD to make it! And I really regret that. There's smocking on the skirt. I've always had the attitude that anyone can do almost anything if they try, and found it irritating when people say they can't do things that they've never tried to do. . . but for the record, I can't smock. I'm determined to learn but so far no amount of trying has made the slightest bit of difference. So my pattern has no smocking. Feel free to add some if you're good at that kind of thing though. Also if I were to make this dress again I think I would tack down the pleats in the front somehow. Once I had the dress on the doll, the pleats kept falling open, making the bodice look baggy, but I'm sure you can see that in the photos.

Also I want to apologize for the fact that the photos have turned out a little funny. The fabrics I used had a fairly high sheen and apparently don't photograph well.

Gwendolen (Helen Kish's Shea) full length

As you can see in the picture, the skirt, bodice and sleeves are all one fabric; the collar and cuffs are a second fabric; and the undersleeves, yoke and neck frill are a third fabric. There is a bow at the back which is made from the same fabric as the bodice and skirt.

First thing to do is to make the entire front bodice.

I've made the neck ruff as an entirely separate piece to the dress, so don't worry about that just yet.

Cut and line the yoke piece and the collar.

If you're making the collar out of velvet (like I did) don't line it with velvet, line it with a scrap of cotton or silk. (Although I was horrified when I realised the scrap of "artificial" silk I was using to line it was not actually artificial at all! I felt like I'd just wasted something precious!)

With right sides together sew the collar onto the yoke.

Cut and pleat the bodice, the area between the arrows on the pattern is the inside of the pleat (the bit you can't see).

Stitch the pleats into place across the top and the bottom and (as I wish I had) maybe tack them in place along their length.

Then sew the collar/yoke piece into the bodice. Don't worry if the collar sticks up a bit at this point, you can tack it down at the points later.

Next cut and line, hem or face the back bodice pieces. The overlap/wrap for back fastenings are included in the pattern piece, but not marked.

Sew the front and back bodices together along the shoulder seams.

Now put the bodice in a safe place while you make the sleeves.

Cut two sleeve pieces, two cuff pieces and two undersleeves.

Make a hem on one edge of the undersleeves. Make it wide enough that you'll be able to thread it with elastic, this is the lower edge.

Sew one edge of the cuff to the lower edge of the sleeve, with the right side of the cuff against the wrong side of the sleeve.

Fold the cuff back over the sleeve, so the wrong side of the cuff is now against the right side of the sleeve, tuck the edges of the cuff under and sew it down.

Then gather the undersleeve piece onto the lower edge of the sleeve.

Now to attach the sleeve to the bodice.

I didn't gather them. In the original picture it looks like the sleeves have been sewn straight onto the bodice with the excess pleated into the top of the sleeve where the shoulder seam is, so that's how I did it. You could gather them if you wanted, they'd be puffier. But I like them this way.

Next sew the side seams of the bodice and the seams on the sleeves. BUT before you finish the sleeve seams, thread elastic into the lower edge of the undersleeves and tie it off.

Try the bodice on the doll and if necessary tack the points of the collar down so they don't stick up.

Cut the skirt piece. Or pieces. I used a front piece and two back pieces simply because my fabric wasn't big enough to cut a single 80cm piece.

Line, face or hem the lower edge. I've discovered I prefer facing on dolls skirts. It's almost impossible to make a hem look neat in this size.

Then gather the skirt onto the bodice.

Finish the back opening and add fastenings.

But you're not finished yet!

There's more to come.

Gwendolen's fairy tale dress back view.

Cut the pieces for the sash. The two larger pieces then need to be doubled over and sewn into tubes along their longer side, then ironed flat. 

Take the bow piece and fold the two ends into the centre so that they overlap and sew together. 

To get the fringes you may be able to just fringe the ends of your fabric. I wasn't so lucky. I was using a pretty cheap polyester that had no intention of fringing at all. So I cut two scraps of silk 6cm square, folded them double and zigzag stitched them along one end. Then I frayed the rest of the silk by pulling out the crossways threads nearly up to the zigzagging. Then I tucked the zigzagged part inside the open end of the sash and stitched it closed.

Pleat the bow centre with your fingers, you can put a stitch or two in if it's easier, then attach the centre (or not quite centre) of the tails to the centre of the bow. (I made mine slightly off centre for realism)

fold under the edged of the small sash piece  and iron flat. wrap this piece around the centre of the two larger pieces and sew closed. Then attach the sash to the back of the dress.

AND of course the neck ruff!

Cut the neck ruff piece.

Double it over, right sides together and sew along the long side into a tube.

Turn it in the other way.

Turn the ends in.

Stitch a second line about half a centimetre in from the seam. This is the casing for a ribbon.

Stitch the ends closed, EXCEPT on the casing.

Run baby ribbon through the casing.

Pull the ribbon up so it's the right length to fit around the doll's neck (test on the doll of course!)

Tack the ribbon into place at these points and cut off the tails to the length you want them.

And NOW you're finished! If you're like me at this point you'll need a nice sit down and a cup of tea, while you decide whether to feel proud or cry for a while.

Seriously, making this dress was the most emotionally scarring sewing project of my life! And that is only a slight exaggeration!

And now the pattern and then some more pictures of the finished product.

And she looks so lovely, maybe it was worth the almost nervous breakdown it caused!

Gwendolen looks like a character from a nursery rhyme or fairy tale.

Except for the scrap of cotton she has stuck to her sleeve!

"Would you RELAX it's just a dress!" 

Gwendolen is unsympathetic to my stress over making this dress.

 

Shoes are MSD (Kid delf) sized by Luts.
They fit o'kay with socks.

Stockings are from a pattern in an old issue of the Kish Collectors Society newletter.
Seriously if you like Kish dolls join the Society, it's not expensive and the newsletters are lovely.

Update (I'm still here!)

Ok, so it looks like I've been a little slack on this blog lately.
The reason is a monster has taken over my lounge room! . . . kind of.
I started building a dollhouse in January of last year and it has slowly spread itself all over the house. And it's still not finished. When it is it will look something like this :

Garfield house by Greenleaf

Except mine won't be that perfect or those colours. Anyway my family gave me an ultimatum "Finish the dollhouse or get rid of it!" So, at the moment sewing has had to be put aside in favour of finishing the dollhouse of my dreams. While I'm on the subject of dollhouses, if you ever think about building a dollhouse first ask yourself what you would rather have sanity, money or a dollhouse. If the answer isn't a dollhouse, don't build a dollhouse.

Anyway I am working on a dress, it's based on this one from the LACMA:

There have been a couple of issues with it. Firstly I changed the way I was attaching the cuffs, halfway through making it and then the sleeves wouldn't fit over the doll's hands. Secondly at the waistline there are triangular areas of smocking on the skirt. I thought "That can't be too hard!" but it turned out that for someone that knows nothing about smocking, it kind of is. Especially if you want it to look good. So I'm pretty sure my final version won't have the smocking.

Anyway, I just have the skirt and the big bow in back left to do and it's finished. So hopefully sometime in the next week and a half I'll manage to get it done while my dollhouse parts are drying and finally get some pictures up.

Wonderland Patience Again!

I restyled Patience's hair into the ringlets I wanted her to have in the first place. I like the way it turned out. Because I washed all the gluey varnishy stuff out of her hair, it's a LOT softer now and prettier. I took these pictures right after I undid her rags, so I hadn't tidied up the ends yet. The frizzy bits on the bottom of the curls are the very ends of her hair, I trimmed them off after I took the pictures. Also if you can see a black smear in her hair - it's ash. I didn't realise it was there until I was cropping the pictures.

Sometimes Patience looks like she's plotting something!

Probably plotting to steal Alice in Lalaloopsyland's rabbit.

 

 The Littlest Pet Shop Peacock always tells Patience the best stories.

 

I also had a play with different clothes.

I discovered that I have no other doll shoes that fit Patience at all. Longer Living Dead Doll outfits fit her but most of them are disturbingly short (which is why I didn't take pictures.). I have a large Alice in Lalaloopsyland doll and thought her dress would look cute on Patience but it was nowhere near long enough, the hem only reached Patience's hips! Some clothes for twelve inch Kish dolls will fit her. But  Patience is both thinner and longer in the body so some clothes won't fit or will just look silly.

But I love Patience in Olivia Primavera'a dress!

Patience is charmed by this dress, but isn't sure if she's a ballerina or a fairy.

 

 Why, hello there!

 

 What an unusual bird!

A bird in the hand is worth. . .

 

I'm not sure yet if I'm going to be making clothes for Patience or not. I really like her original outfit and don't want to change her clothes, but at the same time I keep coming up with other things I could make for her. I probably will eventually but for the moment I'm going just keep her as something to look at. . . until that face gets to me.

 

 PLEASE make me a new dress!!!

New doll - Wonderland Patience by Wilde Imagination

Wonderland Patience with Alice in Lalaloopsyland's

white rabbit.

 This is my newest addition, Wonderland Patience by Wilde Imagination. I have always been a fan of Robert Tonner and last year I decided to buy a Robert Tonner doll. Except there were no Tonner dolls available that I actually wanted. I liked a lot of them but simply didn't want them. I thought about buying Maudylynne Macabre but it seemed silly to me to buy her when the postage would have costed more than the doll. 

  And then I stumbled across Garden Patience. Unfortunately I have a rule. If I want to buy something that's over a hundred dollars, I make myself wait at least a week before buying it. (You wouldn't believe how often at the end of the week my response is "Nah, it's great but I don't WANT it.") At the end of the week I went back to order Garden Patience and . . . she was SOLD OUT! I looked around the internet at various doll shops and ebay, and there were some still available but they were twice the original price! I gave up on Garden Patience and instead started checking Wilde Imagination regularly for new dolls. Long story short I got Wonderland Patience!

  I love this doll. (Although the boys in my house have declared her to be the creepiest doll I own.) But there are one or two things I don't like about her. Firstly, I don't know much about strung dolls, but I think the  stringing in my doll's neck is too loose. Unless her head is tilted slightly forward, it tends to flop backwards in a creepy, dead kind of way. And secondly, from the prototype pictures I expected her to have lovely curls, yes I expected them to be shellacked to death, but I expected lovely curls. The curls are shellacked to death but they are not lovely. When she arrived they were flattened and squashed against the back of her head. A few days later they'd fallen down a bit to look like this

Originally all these curls were flattened right against the back of her head.

I tried to tease the curls down into proper curls, but they just started falling out leaving a limp wave. That's the point her hair is at in the pictures. Since then I've washed out the shellac (One of the most disgusting experiences of my life) and brushed out the curls, next I am going to recurl it to see if I can make it be lovely curls. If it works at all I'll show it in another post.

  These disappointments aside, I am completely in love with this dolls articulation! The separate elbow and knee pieces give her a flexibility that most dolls don't have. There is a review of Ahoy Patience on The Toybox Philosopher's blog that goes into her articulation in more detail and I really can't top that. You can find her review here.

  The big difference between this Patience and the other Patience dolls is that Wonderland Patience has rooted hair whilst the others are wigged. I'm not sure if there's a reason for this, whether rooting is cheaper and with a wig she would have gone over budget or if it's because her hair is all swept back off her face and that quite often looks funny in wigs, or if they simply felt like it. But the rooting is nice and the hair fibre (once it's not full of glue) is lovely and soft. Also when I brushed her curls out, almost no hair fell out, even though I wasn't being particularly gentle, which to me is a good sign.

Her outfit is quite detailed. Her apron is white cotton trimmed with broderie anglaise and lace. The key is attached to a red ribbon that is sewn to the apron, just above her pocket. It looks better when the key is tucked inside the pocket but I forgot to get any photos of her like that.

Under her apron her blue dress is fairly plain. It has an attached underskirt of soft, white netting that has lace trim on the lower edge.

Patience without her apron.

 Dress showing the underskirt.

Under her dress she wears a petticoat of some sort of white nylon taffeta. There is an extra frill of netting on the petticoat to make the dress stand out more.

  Petticoat. Unfortunately my camera doesn't like this much white.

Her stockings have a lycra section at the crotch which makes them double as underpants. The legs are a white fishnet with stripes of denser weave, making them white on white striped.

Her shoes are patent "leather", fastening with little bead buttons. These are a lot easier to do up than I expected. Very well made  and adorable.

I love Patience's face. When she's undressed her head does look out of proportion to her body, but in her clothes (particularly because her clothes are so puffy) It actually looks a lot more proportional. There was way too much light in the room on the day when I took these pictures to get any good close ups or even many good pictures. Everything came out with a lot of glare and a white haze. So there won't be the usual amount of photo spam at the end of this post, just two more pictures.

One of the reasons I chose this Patience over the others available, is the natural looking facial colouring.

Because of the weight of her hair and her floppy head issues, 

I had trouble getting her to balance on her own.