My Oldest doll is a mystery

Right off the bat I will tell you that we will be revising this doll again sometime soon when I am able to take better pictures. I just really wanted to post something today and she is pretty cool even with the less than stellar photography.

I'm not sure who this doll is or when she came out, but she is definitely from the same era as the first Barbie, so that would put her around 1959. When I first found her I thought she might be a Bild Lilli ( the doll that Barbie was based on) but upon closer inspection I'm leaning towards the idea that she is a Barbie knock off. Someone once suggested she might be a Suzette, but after doing some research I found that Suzette doll were younger looking, with a more rounded face. The name stuck with me and we need to call her something, so let's call her Suzie from now on.

When I found Suzie, many years ago at a thrift store, she was pretty darned disgusting. She was filthy, her face paint had mostly rubbed off and her hair was a knotted mess. I wish I would have takes some pictures for a "before and after" and maybe I did and don't remember, it was a long time ago. I cleaned her and redid her face paint. Her eyebrows are original and I used whatever was left of her eyes as a guideline to repaint them and did her lips completely. I know they are a bit crooked but she was my one of my first repaints so I don't think she came out too bad. The hair was beyond salvaging so I just removed it all and rerooted her with some thin, bright red yarn that makes her look like she has tiny red dreadlocks. I did this mostly because I just happened to have red yarn and why not? 

She was naked when I found her but as you can see, right now I have her wearing a reproduction of Barbie's Solo in the Spotlight outfit. It fits her perfectly, but not the shoes. I have never been able to find shoes that fit her right.

 

By the way, in person the diffence in color between the head and the rest of the body is way less obvious. 

Here are some photos without her dress so you can see what she looks like:

As you can see she has pretty much the same body as a #1 Barbie. She has a hard plastic body with a rubber head and five points of articulation (head, arms and legs).

Here she is next to a Barbie reproduction so you can see what they look like side to side. As you can see Barbie is a bit taller and it;s not just because she has shoes and fluffier hair.

Here a 3/4 profile view.

And lastly, here's Suzie with a stewardess outfit I found at a dollar store. It does a good job of looking like a 1960's stewardess uniform as long as you ignore the velcro closure, the shoes kinda fit her and it even came with a suitcase. Not bad for a dollar!

If anybody has any idea to who this doll might be, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

That's all for now. Next time we see Suzie, I'll take some photos by sunlight so you can get more detail and less blur.

Olive

My intention with this blog was to create a sort of inventory for my dolls. What will probably be of most interest to other people, is going to be my older, vintage stuff and (hopefully) the custom stuff I make. So it might seem odd that I start up with Olive over here which I made pretty straight from a pattern, but I really like her a lot, so much that she got me into making felt dolls, even though what I collect is fashion dolls (mostly Barbies and Monster High).

Olive is what inspired me to make other custom felt doll made to look like people I actually know, so I think she deserves her own spotlight. And now that I'm thinking about it, she makes a good model to review this pattern, for those of you out there that might want to make one.

I used Simplicity Pattern 1900, in case you didn't notice the big picture up there, and she was pretty simple to make so I can definitely recommend her as a beginner's project. I sewed her completely by hand. She has a few tiny curves in the hands and hair and I get easily frustrated by the sewing machine in these instances plus felt makes a very satisfying crunch as you sew it. I sew most things by hand but felt is by far the most enjoyable fabric.

A really good thing about this pattern is that the pieces are small enough that you can cut them out of those little felt rectangles that you can get pretty much anywhere  for about 35 cents each and they come in a great variety of colors. You can probably make the whole thing out of five rectangles, maybe seven if you want to make the clothes out of felt too, and still have bits left over for other dolls.

The only thing I changed from the pattern was that I used buttons for the eyes instead of embrodering them. I really like these tiny buttons so I needded to buy them. And then I needed to find something to put them on so I made Olive.

Here's one last picture of her sitting down which looks kinda weird but is the only other one I have and I'm too lazy to take new ones even though Olive and my phone are quite literally sitting next to me right now.