Paula Walton’s doll-making notes
Posts that some how wandered completely off topic.
May you have a wonderful doll filled 2011!
After being gone on vacation for slightly over a week, I’m now back home and back to work with a vengeance. Currently I have six new heads that I’m working on. One of them, and the rest of the doll to go along with it :), is already sold. I also have a stack of bodies in the works and I’m busily stitching away on three dresses and two straw bonnets. I’m not sure if I’m energized after my trip or just in panic mode because I’m behind schedule!
Either way, my vacation was excellent. I flew to Omaha, NE, to visit family and to meet up with my sister and 13 other female friends for a road trip to Arkansas. Once in Arkansas, we shopped for two days at ten craft shows. Two of our favorites are War Eagle and Belle Vista.
My shopping was somewhat limited by the size of my suitcases and carry on luggage. You’d be amazed by what you can cram into a suitcase if you really try! Some of my finds were even doll, or at least sewing, related. I bought a fairly recent Moravian doll from an antique mall in Omaha and I purchased lace and some fun sewing themed necklaces in Arkansas. I also bought many, many other things… Even a wood pecker bird house, which did fit into my carry on suitcase.
Earlier this summer I ordered a studio building from Klotter Farms and today was the big delivery day! When you live and work in a 220 year old house, space is sometimes an issue. Not that our house isn’t quite large, it’s over 3000 square feet of living space, plus an attic and a cellar, but we use every single bit of it. So coming up with a larger studio was somewhat challenging.
After considering all the alternatives, I decided to buy a custom-built outdoor structure from Klotter Farms in Ellington, CT. Since we already have three barns, outbuildings are a way of life for us. For any of you thinking “OMG, why doesn’t she just work in one of the barns?”, obviously you haven’t spent much quality time in an 18th century barn lately. 🙂
Because we wanted to place the new studio into the 10′ x 24′ footprint of a former chicken coop, I was limited to a 12′ x 20′ building (we were able to come out an extra 2′ to the front). This is an improvement over my current 8′ x 14-1/2′ workspace. It’s not going to solve all of my space problems, but it is going to help.
I’m going to move most of my textile related items into the new studio, including 13 of my 14 sewing machines. Then I plan to turn my current, smaller in-home studio, into an office (where sewing machine #14 will live – surely everyone needs an emergency sewing machine stashed in their office, right ??? 🙂 ). Eventually I would like to buy another building to use as a greenhouse/painting studio.
I have to say that watching the building being delivered was quite interesting! Today was not the ideal day to do anything outdoors. The forecast was for high winds, heavy rains and flooding. Think monsoon season and you won’t be far off. Warm, steamy, humid air and pretty much constant, heavy rain.
We were told to expect the building to arrive between 7 – 8 a.m. The cat did his part, by waking us up at 6:20. We didn’t exactly leap out of bed, but we were up and moving before 7:00. As it turned out, the trucks didn’t show up until almost 9:00, which gave us plenty of time to mop up the flood waters in the house!!! 
The massive amount of rain caused the ceiling in my front parlor to leak like a sieve and my laundry room to flood. I quickly ran out of dry towels and containers to catch all of the rain in. What a morning! Just as I was getting the worst of the water mopped up, I looked out the window to see my studio sitting out in the road in front of our house.
The next hurdle we encountered in our path was that the studio was loaded on the truck facing the wrong direction. So the delivery guys had to unload it right in the middle of a near by side street and then load it back on the truck from the other end. This went much smoother than you would expect. It turns out that getting buildings on and off of trucks is no big deal, if you know what you are doing.
It only took about four hours for two guys to move the studio into place, pop up the roof and nail it into place (they deliver it folded flat) and finish putting on the trim. It was amazing! It’s not exactly “instant studio”, because it did take Brian a couple of weeks of hard work to prep the site, and now that the building is here we have to finish the interior – it’s not really Where Women Create material yet :). However, we are ready to move on to the next phase of my studio adventure – the electrician!
Everybody keep your fingers crossed that we don’t wash away. We are supposed to get even more rain tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow night. I’m starting to feel like Mrs. Noah… has anybody seen my pair of unicorns?
Last Thursday my husband, Brian, and I went to Brimfield, MA for the day. We spent seven and a half hours walking through the fields that border the main street of the town, shopping for antiques.
We managed to unearth some fabulous ‘treasures”. Among our finds were a handful of the painted milk glass buttons that I use on my Izannah dresses. I was able to purchase both brown and purple rimmed buttons for $1 each, but I had to pay $2 for pink ones.
My other sewing and doll related goodies include a vintage velvet pincushion, two wonderful, very early, 19th century samplers, a sweet mid-19th century cloth doll, a small gray doll chair – just the right size for an Izannah , a mohair terrier, and a whole bag full of millinery flowers, ribbons and trims.
I rounded off my shopping by buying a tiny glass vase, a purple transferware plate, an extremely heavy concrete planter in the shape of a woman’s head, a surprise Christmas gift for a dear friend (no I can’t say what it is), and half a dozen vintage aprons.
Obviously if you have a chance you should go to one of Brimfield’s thrice annual antique sales, held in May, July and September each year. Some years I don’t buy much at all, and other times I fill up the van, but it is always enjoyable. Just be sure to wear comfortable shoes!
I just received some excellent news! The following is an excerpt from a letter Early American Life magazine sent me yesterday:
Dear Paula Walton,
Congratulations! Because of your creative talents and dedication to historical accuracy, you have been chosen to join the distinguished group of craftspeople listed in the 2010 Directory of Traditional American Crafts in the category “toys and dolls.”
Now in our 41st year, Early American Life continues to promote traditional craftsmanship, providing our national readership with comprehensive information on early American crafts, their history, their function, and the importance of their preservation. In addition, we are committed to promoting individual craftspeople and their artistry. As a Directory artisan, you rank as one of the most talented of them all.
The Directory issue will begin distribution to subscribers on about June 3rd. (The newsstand date is June 22nd).
I am extremely honored to have been juried into the Directory once again. Even though this will be the 22nd time I have been in the Directory, it’s still every bit as thrilling as the very first time.
The two examples of my work that I submitted for judging were one of my Izannah Walker reproduction dolls and a fully jointed teddy bear made of antique white mohair. I don’t always submit items from the same categories every year, because I make many different things. For 2010 I decided that Toys and Dolls was a very appropriate category, since I started this year finishing my Izannah class and getting it shipped out to my first round of students.
So thank you Early American Life. If you’d like to buy a copy of the 2010 Directory issue, look for it to be on sale June 22nd.
I did something recently that I haven’t done since 1975. I bought myself a new doll. What??? I can see all those puzzled looks on your faces. You are thinking, “Is this woman nuts? She’s a doll collector. She buys dolls all the time. What the heck is she talking about?” It’s very true that I do buy quite a few dolls, but they are all old dolls and the operative word here is new.
The last time I bought a new doll for myself was when I was first married and saw two tiny dolls dressed as infants, which came with a frilly baby carriage and cradle. I could just see those little dolls sitting on a nursery shelf!
The dolls never made it out of their boxes. I stored them in a closet, patiently waiting for a baby girl. Instead I had three boys whose nurseries had primary rainbows, brown teddy bears, and Peter Rabbit (separate nurseries and different themes). Eventually I sold the tiny frilly dolls on eBay, where they found a good home. After all, by then they were over 25 years old and collectibles!
This time around I bought the new doll just for me. She is a replica of a Queen Anne style wooden doll. I love Queen Anne woodens, and I’ve gone so far as to price antique ones. If you have done that too, then you know why I haven’t purchased one yet. To be honest, I pretty much love most things carved from wood. I have a real soft spot for carousel animals, Noah’s Arks, ships figure heads and of course wooden dolls. I already have numerous carousel animals and arks, so wooden dolls just had to be next.
I bought this doll from Kathy Patterson. Her reproduction Queen Anne dolls are the most authentic ones that I have seen. If you would like to be amazed, go visit her blog babesfromthewoods.com. Caution: only do this when you are completely alone, as drooling may occur!
To top it all off, not only is Kathy extremely talented, she’s a genuinely nice person too, and I hear that she has a great studio to work in! Kind of makes all your little green envy monsters stir, doesn’t it????
I hope that this first day of Spring is as glorious where you are, as it is here in Connecticut! The sun is out, birds are everywhere and I even have flowers blooming weeks early, due to an unexpected warm spell.
It’s a great weekend for a celebration, which is what we are doing at our house! No, we aren’t partying because my Izannah doll class is finally finished, although that would certainly be a very good reason, too. Instead it’s a birthday weekend here. Our family has gathered together to wish my husband, Brian, and our oldest son, Ian, Happy Birthday! Their shared big day was actually on the 18th, but we had to wait for the weekend to come around.
So my wish for the day is that you are all getting to enjoy the beginning of spring in a special way too! 🙂
Yesterday was a perfect day. For the past twenty-four years I have been creating and selling fine handmade trinkets, little bits of this and that to nourish your soul, embellish your home and simply to make you smile. Once upon a time, further back toward the middle of those twenty-four years, I used to spend the first months of each year designing fanciful new doodads and gewgaws. Tucked up in front of a blazing fire with my sketchbook, needles, threads and stacks upon stacks of fabric, I would design, create and perfect fanciful cloth dreams. While the winter winds blew and Mother Nature sprinkled the world with icy “glitter”, I would stay at home and work away on anything my heart desired.
Time moves on and things change, as they always do. I no longer have the luxury of wiling away all of my winter days working on new designs. What I have now are a few perfect days each year that recreate the gift of past times. Yesterday was one of those days.
I spent the day making samples for my Izannah class instruction book. It was wonderful to have an “all Izannah” day. In the morning I rummaged through my attic to find cotton and wool stuffing. I could tell it was going to be a stellar day when I managed to burrow through my stash of antique fabrics and lay my hands on all three of the fabrics I needed to find in the very first box! Then I sat down at one of my favorite sewing machines, my mid-1940’s Singer Featherweight and sewed body parts together for several hours. I would have liked to use my Great-Grandmother Lovelady’s Singer treadle machine, but my sewing room was too icy cold and the treadle isn’t anyone’s idea of portable. 🙂
I took a short break to make a big pot of French Onion soup for lunch, and because I was having such a charmed day, my husband Brian cut up all of the onions for me. Just so I wouldn’t cry.
In the afternoon and evening, I moved to my front parlor. There I built a warm, toasty fire in my Shaker box stove and pulled my Sheraton sewing table right in front of it to work on. I love my sewing table, not just because it has all sorts of wonderful places to hold my hand sewing tools, or because I can stash my current project away inside it’s fabric pleated “pouch” when I need to make the room look presentable, but because I like to think about all of the other women who have sat beside it and plied their needles during the past 200 years. It gives me comfort to know that while some things change, others remain forever constant.
When I was much, much younger I didn’t have the patience for hand sewing. It was something that I hurried through just to finish a project. Now, intricate hand sewing is my very favorite part of anything I make. I find fashioning tiny, perfect fingers and thumbs, like I did yesterday, to be a treat. I didn’t even mind too much 🙂 when I had to tweak my Izannah’s boot pattern for the sixth time and make yet another in a long line of sample feet.
Everyone needs a perfect day now and again. I hope that you find one of your own soon, the type of day that brings no bigger stresses and strains than having to battle it out with your cat over who gets the chair next to the fire!
I hope that your Thanksgiving holiday this year was filled with family, friends and food! (and a bit of time for yourself to shop, sew, sculpt, or paint).
We had an excellent weekend. All three of our sons were home for Thanksgiving. We also got to see many of their childhood friends, who were in town for the holiday and came over to our house to hang out with the guys.
My youngest son, Colin, who is an illustrator and editor (he’s current living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan), did some photo shop work for me which helped me launch my Spun Cotton Ornament Journal over weekend.
I am very thankful to have such great students and customers, you are all the very BEST! Thank you! I look forward to talking to you in the coming year, as you enrich my life with your creative spirits.
Izannah Walker Journal 