Please excuse the nudity – this is a 6″ felt doll that I’m making for my submission to the Stitched Self project. It’s a collaboration between Stitch London and the Science Museum, where an exhibition of all the Stitched Selves will take place for the re-opening of their Who Am I? gallery in June.
I wasn’t very keen on the pattern that was provided, so I made my own. The doll is exactly 6″ tall, and is made from two pieces of felt, blanket stitched together. The hair is a little piece of wool roving, and the face is simply embroidered on.
Given that I’ve just come out of hospital, my surgical scars are very much at the top of my mind at the moment. Because of that, I decided that my Mini-Me should have them too. So, the apparently random embroidery you can see on her body is the result of one mistaken appendectomy, one laparoscopy (which found and removed the real cause of the pain), one operation to remove an osteochondroma from my left hip, and the most recent one which was an arthroscopy on my right hip.
I haven’t included any scars that I ended up with as a result of accidents, clumsiness or stupidity. So I haven’t embroidered the scar on my right shin, where Matthew Bricknell was riding his new bike straight at me, and I jumped up the garden wall to escape (age 11). I haven’t embroidered the scar on my right forearm, which I burnt on the lid of a bun toaster whilst making a batch of McChicken Sandwiches (age 22). Nor the one on my right knee, which was the result of an incident where I learned that I can’t drink beer and walk and send text messages all at once (old enough to know better).
Obviously my Mini-Me now needs some clothes. She’ll definitely be wearing a pink spotty coat, a black t-shirt and some silver Doc Martens. Then I just need to decide whether she needs a skull print skirt, or a little pair of cropped jeans. I’m quite intimidated by the prospect of sewing clothes on such a little scale, but I think I’ve worked out a pattern for the tiny boots, so I might just start with those.