Monday, June 21, 2010

youth doll feet

Youth doll feet are one of the worst parts of any doll. They are tiny, barely foot shaped and useless for building leather boots on. So not only do I have to remake the upper arms of the doll and the thighs, I also have to remake the feet. I have done that in several ways but yesterday I thought I would try something a little different and see how it came out. And I took photos to document the process. It is not a perfect system but I like the direction it's going.
First we start with regular, awful, youth doll feet.The really do have a funny shape. It's also odd that the Breyer doll with the largest hands (larger than the cowboy even) has the tinniest feet. Oh well, I'll fix that......that's better. Now I just have a stubb which really isn't much better than tiny youth doll feet. But I can work with this. First I take my specialty tool (which is a large, sharp, yarn needle with a handle made from Gapoxio) and poke two holes in the part I cut. Then I will stick in a thick wire that is bent in a "U" shape.

It seems to be working out so far. Let's keep going. The next step is to wrap the wire with gauze and medical tape in the same way I would for remaking arms and legs.


Not bad. It's foot shaped! And unlike wrapping around the original youth doll foot this one is actually pretty flat on the bottom. I think I am liking the wire in the middle of the stubb. Let's make some boots and see how that comes out...


...not too bad. They are boot shaped and after a bit of washing to get the extra glue off they should be pretty nice. I think the only thing I would do differently next time is a tiny bit less gauze in the middle so the feet will be a bit smaller before the boots is built on. But these are pretty good feet I think.
And here is the finished little lady. Her feet are pretty nice and she rides very well. I think the slightly new style of foot making is here to stay.

4 comments:

horsienut said...

It's funny to see this as I attempted boots for the youth doll and was perplexed as what to do with her stubby feet! I ended up adding on to the ends of her feet with tape...it worked OK but your method looks more "solid". Now if only we could joint her ankles...

Sian said...

My next project will be a couple youth dolls so this is really interesting to me :-) Can you also describe what you do to the arms and thighs? I hadn't considered doing anything to those but the smaller dolls sure have problems!

Braymere said...

I have a youth hunt seat doll that is dressed in jods and paddock boots. I cut her feet off at the ankle and used an awl to poke a hole in her leg and then another corresponding hole in the foot. I crammed a length of wire into both holes and presto--the doll now has jointed ankles. Her jods are long enough to cover the wire section and I *always* get compliments on how well this doll sits. I did this little bit of plastic surgery four or five years ago and I've never had to replace the wires although it certainly would be easy to do so. Her feet have never fallen off either!

Field of Dolls Studio said...

I did an entire blog post on rebuilding youth dolls in March of 2009. Here is a link http://fieldofdolls.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

With the wire in the middle of the foot you can still bend the foot for a heels down position. If the thighs are also remade you can bend the leg in just the right way so the feet are in the proper position as well (if that makes sense)