My long tortured doll-making journey

This is a long story, so bear with me. Back in the fall, my friend Erica texts me and asks me if I can make some dolls for CASA, to use as a display when they go to different events. She had seen some at a United Way event, and thought that they needed some. Being me, I asked her if she was smoking crack, because I didn't know the first thing about making dolls.

Then, also being me, I started thinking about how I could do it.

And so I found a doll pattern. And then I found some embroidery design faces. And so with those two items, I made this:

Her issues are obvious.

So then I decided that her main problem was that her face was not in proportion to the size of her head/body. So I enlarged the pattern size, while reducing the size of the face.

And ended up with this:

Which, from the front, doesn't look too bad. Until you look at the back of her head. You see, I have straight hair. And thus, I didn't anticipate that when I decide to give the doll a nice shoulder length hair cut rather than the cascading far past her waist haircut, that the curl of her hair would cause it to spring up to within 3 inches of the top of her head. Thus covering less than half of the back of her head.

See:

Again, you can understand her issues.

Never one to give up, I decide a new look is called for. A whole new hair look, along with a whole new face look.

And so I make this doll for Erica's daughter:

She is well loved by the way. But unfortunately, her hair has issues of its own. According to my husband, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law and several others, she bears a strong resemblance to Aunt Jemima. Well phooey.

So finally, I made this:

And the sky opened and the angels sang, and there was great rejoicing.

Until I realized that in sewing her together, I actually missed catching the lower left side of her face in the seam. Of course I didn't realize this until she was already completely stuffed and sewn together. With a very small, tight stitch.

And so I did plastic surgery on her with a needle and thread. Her stitches are only visible if you look closely:

Yes, she too has issues.

Maybe the next one will be the one....