I’ve been working on these guys all week. I’ve really enjoyed playing with the hair embroidery.

4 heads, front and back-

I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking. The feet have been an issue. Four dolls, four different feet designs.

The first guy? I took off his feet, restuffed his legs, repositioned the feet and sewed them back on again. Then I embroidered the white of his eyes- what a difference that made- some contrast! I gave him a mustache and embroidered details on his pants. And I decided that the blotches weren’t so bad after all.

Second guy– I thought a lot about the comment Babs left… I agreed with her. I wasn’t satisfied with the lower half of the body. I thought about adding dimension by using a 4 piece pattern for his pants. In the end, I decided that was not the direction to go in. If I did that, I’d really have to change the head too; give him a chin, a round head. There is a balancing act of keeping a simple design and making a believable figure. So, on this guy too, I removed his feet, restuffed the legs- that made a huge difference- repositioned the feet and sewed them back on again. I added embroidered detail onto the front and back of the pants.

Hopefully I will have them all completely finished and ready for their formal portrait tomorrow. I’ve been doing so much hand stitching that my fingertips hurt!

I put some of the embroidered head photos on Flickr, if you want to see more detail.