Pedlar peg

This is another doll bought at auction, and a lovely example. She is a pedlar woman and carries in her basket:

A doll, dolls house, cotton threads, a picture, a boat, cricket bat, rolling pin, fabrics, buttons, cook book, a portrait and knitting.

She has little felt hands with fingers and a woolen shawl. One of my favourite parts is a wooden nose, the only one of over 100 dolls in my collection to have such a nose. The painted face is very characterful and covered with a sort of stocking material.

She has a patterned skirt with a black top edged with lace and a white apron. She wears a matching black and lace bonnet. I’m not sure how old she is but she is certainly at least vintage.

 

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Real retro

There is a fashion at the moment for retro style fabrics, but this is the real thing! It’s interesting that you can still tell an original 70’s fabric from a retro 2010’s one.

There has been some interest expressed in knowing how to dress peg dolls, so I thought that with every doll I post I would try to explain how it is made, so if you should want to have a go you can.

 This doll is simply made: Her arms actually go through a hole in the peg and have been wrapped along with the body, with a white nylon type ribbon. The skirt is a cone shape with a wide ribbon sewn around the bottom and an orange ribbon tied round the peg to define the waist. The hat is simply a circle of matching fabric with the edges finsihed and a feather sewn into the top.

Her face is drawn on and her hair is wool wrapped around in a circle.

Sounds quite easy really!

A large collection

My collection of dolls was given a huge boost when a lot of about 50 dolls came up on an auction site. I won the auction paying just over a pound for each one which although great for me, was a bit sad in a way. There is alot of work in them and I think they are undervalued. The collection was a bit of a lottery and there are varying levels of quality of dolls with a few excellent ones and some very bad ones!

Van peg is one of my favourites. I will post some more good ones of them later and perhaps some of the not so great ones too!

An improvement!

The last post was one of my first (if not the first) attempts at making a peg doll and I think I had alot of help with it! I have just finished this one and am happy to see I have improved considerably…

       

I have tried to give her some body shape using wrapped wool and a petticoat and thickening up the arms using Flair tubular ribbon. Underneath she looks like this:

Some of the shape has been lost under the clothes, but I think it is worth paying that extra attention to what’s going on underneath. You can scale down the print of the fabric but scaling down the weave of the fabric is harder. I had a basic idea for the dress shape but really she evolved as I went. The flower in her hair is a paper one bought from a craft shop and the umbrella is made from a half circle of fabric wrapped around a cocktail stick. Face transfers might be quick but I think I would rather paint the faces myself, they have more character (more on accessories and faces to come soon).

I have found some unfinished dolls, so I think they will be my next project.

An early attempt

This was one of my earliest attempts at making a peg doll that I can remember. My mum must have helped me with it because the dress is gathered at the top and I don’t think I would have known how to do that back then! If I remember rightly, the material was left over from our school dresses which mum also made for us.

 

She is a little worse for wear now and her arm is broken (these seems to be the case with alot of my dolls, I must have played with them alot). Her face is a transfer but even this is peeling off. Her arms were wrapped around her neck and her hair is black wool that has been glued on.

You have to start somewhere I guess!