Material Girls - Misc Tips

If your thread becomes tangled, knotted or frays easily, and you haven't any thread conditioner on hand, consider running it over a bar of soap before using. The thread will move smoothly through your fabric and leaves no residue as beeswax often does.

Tip from Dollmaker's Journey Newsletter - When using doe suede fabric for doll bodies, prewash it to remove sizing.

When cutting full skins (i.e.: Tibetan goat plates), I have found using an Exacto craft knife, outfitted with a new blade, to be a lot more sanity-inducing then using pointed-tip, sharp scissors to do the job. After you make your hair template, outline the pattern onto the back side (skin side) of the plate, and then gently cut with your Exacto knife. You will not lose the long length of hairs at the (cut) edges of your piece or find all those loose hairs that your doll seems to continually shed. Not to mention it is a whole lot easier to do it this way!

~Camille Pratt

TIP FROM CAMILLE

If you work with natural fiber fabrics (silks, linens, wools and cottons) and/or mohair, wool or tibetan goat plates?any kind of natural material, do not store in plastic containers or bags. All these items need to 'breath' in order to not break down and deteriorate. You can store in acid free tissue paper on a shelf. I purchase the larger goat plates and clip them on skirt hangers and hang in my closet to allow them to 'breath'.

From Deb Hensel:

A wonderful tip we learned from Nancy Gawron in the Unicorn class was how to keep your knot from coming through the fabric when sewing seams shut. If you will just put a tiny piece of stuffing in the V between the threads--just above your knot--it will not slip through.

If you discover that you messed up the nose after needle-sculpting (it's too soft at the tip or just lopsided), open a small hole at the top of the head (in the seam) just big enough for hemo-stats and add the filling necessary. Ladder close the hole, cover it with hair and nobody is the wiser.

Here is one for Freezer paper work. Sometimes one is using the freezer paper on a very light fabric and it is hard to see the edge to sew against. Simply color the whole edge with a pleasant color of colored pencil. Pink or peach . Don't use lead pencil!!! If you sew through it by accident you will have lead pencil on the doll, and it is very hard to get off. The colored pencil will usually brush off and if it doesn't all come right off, it will fade and if it is pink or peach, it isn't disgusting anyway. Now with the edge of the freezer paper a color that contrasts with your fabric, you can see where to sew. (from Judi Ward)