Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Past Workes: Meet Mercy

Meet Mercy. She was inspired by early seventeenth-century America, and I tried my best to make her as accurate as possible a representation of what a girl's poppet would have looked like in those days. I'd always wanted to make an historical doll with maroon and goldenrod fabrics, and what better way than with a doll inspired by the early English settlers?

Contrary to popular belief, the Pilgrims did not wear all black, brown, and grey. They actually liked color quite a lot! This misconception is probably derived from portraits of the Puritans, in which they wear grim, melancholy colors. However, this was not the only kind of clothing that they wore. It's actually a poor representation of what they wore, given that they wore their best clothes for portraits. Given that it was very difficult to dye fabric a consistent, deep black, black clothing was given greater value than perhaps, say, a goldenrod apron. It was easier to dye fabric in colors other than black, so that's what the Puritans did!
Mercy is almost entirely hand-stitched. She's been stuffed with polyfil, and is a OOAK doll. SHe wears a white coif and matching headrail over a purple set of bodies with three little Xs down the front to represent the lacings. She also wears a maroon petticoat with a goldenrod apron over it.

No comments:

Post a Comment