Mistakes

     Friday I meant to cut out doll clothes after school. That did not happen. A nap happened. Watching Youtube videos happened. But no doll work happened. And that happens. We are nearly at the end of January though, which means I only have a couple of months until my next live sale. And I have no dolls ready for it at all.

     What I do have is a start on some saddle bags. Yesterday morning I decided that while I was watching more Youtube videos I might as well do some work. And the perfect table work is making saddle bags. Usually when I made saddle bags I will do one set from start to finish. This time I decided to work on two at the same time. Just to switch things up a bit. I really love the sort of marbled fabric! I have more colors of that as well. I think it will make excellent saddle bags. 

     I also spent some time fixing mistakes. Recently I finished up a saddle seat doll and an Arabian rider, but they arrived to their new home with some flaws. So they came back for me to fix. This lady had a couple of glue spots showing on/through her veil. Glue can be a finicky thing. Sometimes when you put glue on a thing it dries properly clear and you would not even see it. And sometimes, for whatever reason, it gets cloudy and looks awful. This was not a complex thing to fix. Some acetone took off the excess glue and then I very carefully reglued the sides of the veil with my scissors in between the layers. This helped hold the inner piece down until the glue set and kept the upper piece clean. One of her pant legs had also flipped up in a way that made it look like her pant legs were different lengths. Dolls can be frustrating. I think the gather on one side was too tight and was not allowing the cuff to lie inside like it should. So I took out the too-tight gather, redid it, flipped everything back and actually glued down (on the inside, hard to explain) the cuffs so the pant legs now lie properly and look the same length. Which they were the whole time, they were just pretending to be different. 

      I also had to fix up the saddle seat doll. She had a couple of weird spots in the paint on her hat and her bun was a little loose and had a small piece hanging out. I took the hat off and rehaired any parts of the head where the hair had ripped out (which always happens when you take the hats off) and I wound the hair into a super tight bun. There was not any way to repair the hat so I started over with a new hat. I took all of the flocking off and then painted the inside and outside of the hat. Many, many layers later and the hat was a solid color. It then got many layers of matte finish. 
      I usually check over the dolls after they are finished, usually after a bit of time has passed. Fresh eyes are always good to check and make sure everything is as it should be. I guess I didn't do that this time. Having to fix mistakes will likely be a good reminder to always check over my work and make sure all is well. 

        I didn't manage to finish the saddle bags yesterday, I got tired of working on them. But I made a lot of progress on them. I have a handful more steps on each set and then I will have two sets complete and ready for my live sale. I am hoping to have a good variety of these. I posted on Instagram that I started a color wheel of saddlebags. And that really is basically my plan. I am sure I will have pink ones, purple ones, red probably, and I'm not sure what else. Maybe some cool lime green ones! I need to see what I have for fabric and what I feel like doing. And I need to get some dolls made!