New Year’s Doll 2019

Bethan Bear at the only service station she will deign to visit: Gloucester Gateway
Every year I make a doll on New Year’s Day. I have a few rules. It must be made from scratch and it must be completed in a single day. It also has to say something about the year that I have had or the year I want. This year I broke the rules a bit, because they are my rules for me and I can’t see much point in giving myself a hard time in our current climate. The doll was finished in one day, but the clothes took me a lot longer.
This year I have been making bears for sale in my Etsy shop so I decided to make one for myself. I also wanted to make a doll based on a photograph I saw in House and Garden of Bethan Laura Wood who is a textile designer. She is a walking work of art and I particularly love the way she does her make-up with two spots of rouge and then two extra dots on top:
This was my starting point. I made the bear out of wool felt with boiled wool features. Once I put the eyeliner on like Ms Wood, though, the bear suddenly looked like a lioness or a puma, which was a bit of a surprise.
I really enjoyed doing the stem stitch round her eyes, which was done with three strands of embroidery thread. I made her with long legs in order to make it possible to dress her. The little squat bears are lovely but their bandy legs are hard to get into trousers.
I took the decision to stitch the clothes by hand which was a debatable choice, but does give them an artisan feel. I started with trousers and a tunic:
The fabrics are by Amy Butler because I love her joyful use of colour. The little cotton scarf, however, is a piece of IKEA furnishing fabric which I had dyed for another project. Then I made the duster coat to go over the top, and started on the accessories. I made her a shawl from mustard yellow yarn which is pure acrylic but produced a lovely drapey texture. The colour is also apparently one of the hot looks for 2019. I appliquéd a felt artichoke on it. I don’t think it particularly looks like an artichoke but I do like it as an appliqué piece:
For her hat, I used the rather ropey knitting I did on four needles. It was my first ever piece of tubular knitting. I crocheted an edging to try and make it a bit more appealing as a wrist warmer or something. It remained stunningly unattractive, but came into its own as a hat from Bethan. I added two tassels and appliquéd a rose in a finer wool and acrylic mix felt:
I made her some jewellery and finally, I made sure to add some pompoms on her shoes to echo the fantastic ones on Bethan Laura Wood’s pumps.
I absolutely love her and she is definitely not for sale.
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