Calling all doll detectives!!

Last night I was treated to a wonderful surprise by a friend. He opened up a roll of bubble wrap and out fell these 6 wonderful antique cloth dolls. The dolls belonged to his wifes mother. However she has no recolection of them from her childhood and was surprised to find them amongst her mothers things after she had passed away. My friends wife's mother lived in the UK. But I'm not sure if that's where they came from. I'd love to find out more about these dolls.If anyone can help with information about these dolls it would be fantastic.

Little red Riding Hood

her clothing has lots of layers from her cape, pinafore, dress and lacy knickers.

Her little straw basket is very well made as are her limbs. Click on the photo for a larger version and take a look at her hand holding the basket.

Little Red's rear

Little Red Riding Hoods, face detail

I just loved the little detail to the socks. I'm thinking that the shoes where painted ontop of the socks with a gloss paint.

the smallest cloth doll in the collection, 4inches

Couldn't quite make out what was used to embellish the fronts of the hand painted shoes and socks. It looked like wire coils.

This doll was about 5inches.

wool hair

Could she be Gretal or a German costume doll?

Beautiful fine sewing on her clothing.

And who is this gentleman?

He looks to be like a hunter or Shakespearean actor.

Very fine needle sculpting on the face. Black velvet cloth was used for the hair.

Just look at how clever these hands where made!

You can just see some wire poking through where the cloth has worn.

The Random Ten

Tony

Ruby

Audry

Bess

Bert

Greta

William

Annabell

Bobby

Ginger

8 pink ladies and 2 sailors

Flora

Petunia

Candy

Chloe

Pete

Kim

Bell

JuliaJeff

Julie

the last little doll, Julie I've dedicated to my friend Julie who died 3 years ago. This little elephant is the 48th one I've made and is the same age that Julie was when she died. I finished her yesterday morning which was her anniversary. Apart from leaving all her friends and husband behind she also left three lovely cats. I've put a little dedication to her on the back of the label that can only be found if you peel the top layer off or if it was x-rayed! Julie never saw my dolls which is sad as she loved bunny's.

SantaCat has arrived

What a busy, busy, busy time of the year this has been. Not only having family "issues" to deal with but trying to concentrate on getting my art business up and running. These last two months have really been the most productive, exciting, disciplined time.
I've come to the conclusion too to stop making the elephants and bunny's for a while and start making some brand new dolls. One of my new additions to Etsy this afternoon is SantaCat! go check him out there are more photo's of him there. I'll be adding some more Xmas decorations soon. There are some Snowmen people, and more animal Santa's plus a whole lot of other odd ornaments.
I'd love to stay and chat more but BF is about to come home and the place is a mess....I don't know how it happened but doll bits are everywhere!! Gotta Run!! Cheers.....oh one more thing 10 new photo's will be up this evening of my new 50!!

The Big 50

Guess what? Today I finished my first 5o dolls for Xmas orders. Yeah!! I'm so happy I've even managed to finish before the end of the month. But not only did I finish 50 dolls, 50 names where also given. I had to print 50 logo's, coffee stain and bake 50 tags, then tie each tag to those 50 dolls. Oh and not forgetting my 50th sale at ETSY!
Now as fun as it would be to show you all fifty dolls, I won't because then I would have to take 50 photo's of 50 dolls and that would be boring. Plus I've already started work on another 50 dolls, but not bunny's and elephants. I think I will stop making these for a bit as its starting to feel like production line and that's not what my work is about!
So I'll start posting 10 photo's a day.
Sit back and enjoy.

Charlie

Lynette

Emily

Karen

Denby

Helen

Trish

Trevor

Sue

Roy

My personal favorite is Trish, I love her little school girl look. All these dolls will be for sale locally here in Hobart. I'll be putting up some Xmas dolls soon in my Etsy shop.
Another big hi and thank you to all my followers, boy can't believe there are so many of you!!
And a special thank you to Blue Berries in the Field for another blog award! If you don't know of Monique's work go take a peek.