Doll three by Jenny Stacy. Love the way she blends into my knitting! |
Doll two by Jenny Stacy. Like a jester. She's the most colourful |
The first doll by Jenny Stacy. She's also pictured below but now she has a new bonnet.
These are the first dolls I've made in quite a while. Earlier examples are pictured in the right hand side bar of this blog. It's given me such satisfaction to make these, mostly while in the shop between customers. They are just the right size to snuggle like a baby in the crook of your arm.
While I was making them I was thinking about my mother and wishing I could give her one. I was also strongly reminded of my mother yesterday when I visited the Balenciaga exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum.
I took loads of photographs but I don't think I can publish them on social media... Anyway there were lots of examples of clothes made in the 50s and 60s similar to designs my mother wore. She was always very clothes conscious and as her mother was a tailoress, she could point out any style she particularly liked in Vogue magazine and my grandmother could make a pattern from the photograph and set to work.
My mother often talked of going to the market in Nottingham to choose material with her mother for the latest fashionable ensemble! What she didn't appreciate quite so much is the fact that my grandmother insisted on also creating her school uniform so she never felt she quite fitted in... I am sure that my grandmother's interpretation of a school uniform was considerably more stylish than the original but, as children, we just want to blend into the crowd where it's safer...
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