I think you all know about the dolls that I make, not the tiny ones, but the 15 inch dolls I’ve been making for some time.
I’ve been selling the pattern for people to crochet the dolls themselves for years but it’s a crochet pattern and I had a lot of people telling me they can’t crochet, so I made YouTube videos showing some of the more difficult parts of the doll hoping people would learn to crochet to make their own dolls. I even allowed people to sell the dolls made from the patterns in the hopes that at least people could buy the dolls from someone else.
I’ve always been reluctant to sell the dolls for a couple of reasons.
One reason is the amount of time it takes to make a doll. The body alone takes several hours and because I use a slightly smaller hook than recommended to make sure the stuffing can’t be seen it hurts to crochet after a while, so I have to space out making the dolls. Even before making the doll there’s the time taken in dying the wools because you can’t buy wool in flesh tones, I dye the wool and leave it to dry naturally and that takes a couple days.
Once a doll is made I then have to make the clothing and I now make clogs for the dolls, again it takes more time. Some of the more detailed dolls have serious attention to detail that might never be recognised, but even if you never see the detail, I know it’s there. Like the miner doll, you might notice his working headlamp, but you might not notice that he also has a fully working leather belt and making belt buckles in minature when you don’t make belt buckles isn’t easy.
The knitter doll, she comes with a miniature glove knitted in a similar way to the Dales gloves she’s known for, that one glove took 6 hours to make.
So when people asked whether I sell the dolls it became a bit of a sore subject. I’d love as many people as possible to own a handmade doll, but some of my dolls can take months of work. So even at minimum wage a doll would cost more money than people would be willing to pay, and I understand that which is why I have so far never openly sold the dolls.
Well, I’m now selling the dolls. There’s not many of them and the price I’ve settled on is one that hopefully people can accept and one that doesn’t make me feel like I’m working in a sweatshop.
I’m also finally selling the dolls I’ve made over the years. The ones with the plain black plastic eyes when I still worked in acrylic (which isn’t a bad thing) and the ones where I hand painted the faces.
Anyway, they were put in the Etsy shop yesterday and already are selling. If you want a doll, now is the time to get one. I don’t make them often, so having this number of dolls in the shop at one time is a one off. Oh and did I say I’m selling the older dolls for a very low price of £20 each? Yep, thats insane, but the dolls need homes, I can’t keep them all.
And in case you want to know what I mean by the old ones, every photo on this post is one of the £20 dolls, so be quick! Here’s the link to the shop…
Betty Virago 