Hattie and Fern, Part 1: Happy Hattie

I've been a little slow with my doll work this month.  It's always a crazy time of year with back-to-school and all of the chaos that comes with that, but this year has seemed especially hectic.  In addition,  I have two smaller, theme-based collections that I'm planning out, and these are taking a lot of my creative time.

And...I rescued a baby mouse that was trying to die in my basement, so he took a bit of time. :)

Anyway, for the past two weeks I've been working on a lovely pair of dolls that I bought months and months ago.  Even though these girls were from completely different sources, and arrived at completely different times, they immediately looked like they'd been friends forever:

Denver-era My Twinn dolls Helen (left) and Emma (right).

They both epitomize what I consider to be the generic old My Twinn doll: they have a middle-of-the road skin tone (covered in dirt), nondescript grey-ish brown hair, short bobbed hairstyles with heavy bangs, faded eyes, scuffs and rubs all over their vinyl...and wonderful grins.

These two have clearly had adventures that you wouldn't believe, but they're still standing strong, smiling brightly, and ready for more fun!

I call them Hattie (left) and Fern (right).

The doll I started working on first was Helen.  She has a rare face mold (one of my favorites!) and looked like she was going to be pretty easy to fix up.  

Because I already have a Helen, I named this girl Hattie:

Hattie's body was in pretty good shape when she arrived.

Her cloth torso was clean, odor-free, and with very few picks:

She came wearing a full outfit, and I think this clothing saved the fabric parts of her body from getting too dirty.

In contrast, her vinyl limbs were extremely dirty...

And the backs of her legs had a lot of marks and scratches in the vinyl:

Hattie's head didn't have any major scuffs, but her eyes were badly faded and her hair had been given an impishly creative cut:

I love the bits sticking up at the top!

Here's the back of the wig:

And here's a closer look at one of the faded eyes:

It's rare for me to work on a My Twinn doll without removing the head first, but Hattie's neck joint was strong and there was no real reason to disassemble her.

So, I got started working on her head while it was still attached to her body.  Here she is after the wig and the upper eyelashes were removed:

The lower eyelashes were stubborn!

The biggest facial defect (besides a lot of dirt!) was a small scratch in the vinyl above the left eye, and some missing paint in that area:

The other eyebrow had some faded paint, too:

I had to clean Hattie's vinyl several times with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, followed by a soapy bath and rinse.  Here's one of her legs before it was washed:

This is gross, but here's a piece of the Magic Eraser half way through cleaning one leg...

Ew.

And here's the cleaned leg:

After the limbs were clean, I sanded down the scratches on the calves:

That was all I had to do with the body, so I turned my attention back to Hattie's face.

First, I cleaned the vinyl and removed the faded eyes:

Because the Helen face is rare, I wanted to give Hattie some special new eyes.  I chose olive-colored glass eyes from Hand Glass Craft:

Here's a close-up look at the color and detail:

Hand Glass Craft "Olive" D400 Low Lens eyes.

After the eyes were placed and the head was completely cool, I got started sanding down the scuffs in Hattie's eyebrows:

I wasn't able to completely remove the scratch in the vinyl above Hattie's left eye (I didn't want to erase the eyebrow), but I was able to sand the area down enough that I could paint smoothly over it.

Here's Hattie with her blushing complete:

And with her freckles:

I gave her a lot of freckles!

In order to match her (guess what color?) new wig, I also added some darker paint to Hattie's existing eyebrows:

I was happy to be able to leave the original lip paint in place and untouched.  It looks great!

After getting some new auburn eyelashes, Hattie was ready for her wig...

Ta-da!

 As you probably guessed, I made her a redhead.

Shocker.

Hattie's wig is the Marie wig by Monique (in carrot).  I have to say that this is not a spectacular wig.  In fact, I've been a little disappointed with many of the Monique wigs lately.  Their quality is simply not up to the same standard as the Doll of a Kind wigs--and yet they cost pretty much the same amount of money (around $26).

The thing is, natural carrot red is a fairly hard wig color to find in this size (and the wig color I love more than anything else), so I continue to give Monique my money.  

The color of the wig is gorgeous and exactly what I wanted, so that's something.

Red hair tends to bring out the yellow in My Twinn faces (at least with my cameras).  I try to reduce this, but I'll say that Hattie is not an especially yellow doll.  She's your typical Denver 03, or what I assume is Denver 03.  There's definitely some yellow in her complexion, but she's not an Oompa Loompa.

Here's a peek at Hattie's body tag, identifying her as a 2001 doll:

And another look at the back of her nice cloth torso:

I wanted Hattie and Fern to wear matching authentic My Twinn dresses, so I found two of the navy blue sailor dresses.  This is probably my favorite of all the original My Twinn clothing.

Hattie got the more pristine of the two dresses I found.  This dress is used, but it came to me looking practically brand new.  It's in wonderful shape for its age:

I love how it looks with Hattie's new red hair.

I've been switching back and forth between my iPhone and my Canon camera--maybe you noticed.  I'm not really sure which I like better, and I suppose it's good to have a mix of different ways of capturing these dolls.  The photo, above, was taken with the iPhone, and the photo below is from my Canon:

The Canon captures the facial details nicely:

For example, you can see the small gouge in the vinyl above Hattie's left eye:

Here's a GIF of Hattie's makeover!

Here are a few more of my favorite pictures of this sweet girl:

Incidentally, Hattie is in her stocking feet in these pictures because I was waiting for her shoes to arrive and got impatient.

I tried pulling Hattie's hair back with little clips (as I often do), but the construction of this wig does not make that hairstyle very flattering.  This is the main reason why I'm disappointed with the wig.

The right side is particularly bad--see how the hair doesn't pull back smoothly?

The stitching underneath the top layer of hair is really messy, and the placement of the wefts leaves a gap in between sections of hair:

I don't notice this defect when Hattie's hair is down, and there are still some nice ways to style the wig.

For example, it can be parted on the side so that it tumbles over one shoulder:

And it looks nice with a simple ribbon headband:

Most of the time it seems like a lovely wig, with just the right amount of curl.

The wig looks especially pretty when it's spilled out around Hattie's face as she's lounging on the ground!

Here's a close-up of that shot with the other camera:

Hattie's shoes finally came this morning, so I was able to include a few pictures of her in the full outfit.

I chose boots for her because I thought they would add an old-fashioned touch to the vintage sailor dress:

I'm not sure if they have the exact effect I was after, but they look pretty with the dress....and Hattie looks pleased.

These boots would be perfect for any of those 1997 dolls with loose ankle joints!  I'll have to keep that in mind.

I've always loved the Helen face mold, and I've always wanted a redheaded Helen doll.  I tried making a redheaded Helen for myself back in the Toy Box Philosopher days, and she came out fine, but I was eager to give this type of makeover another try to see if I could do better.  I think Hattie is an improvement on my last attempt, so that feels good.

It's rare to find a Denver Helen in such great shape, so I was fortunate to happen upon this girl and be able to keep so much of her body in its original condition.  Of the new features I added, the carrot red Monique wig falls short of perfection, but it still brings a lot of color to Hattie's personality.  In contrast, the dark green Hand Glass Craft eyes are perfect little works of art.

Here's the full list of everything that was changed:

-I thoroughly cleaned all of the vinyl with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser

-I sanded down some imperfections on the face and the backs of the legs

-I removed the faded old eyes and replaced them with hand-made olive green glass eyes from Hand Glass Craft in the UK

-I repainted the face, including eyebrow enhancement and lots of freckles, but excluding the lips

-I placed new eyelashes

-I glued on a new Monique Marie wig.  The wig is glued at the front and the back only.

-I dressed Hattie in a gently used vintage My Twinn sailor dress paired with white tights and lace-up boots

Hattie's biggest flaws are that she has some squeaks in her armature and that her wig, while brand new, has imperfections (sloppiness) in the stitching.  Other than that, she only shows the normal signs of wear and tear from being 18 years old, with little scuffs and shiny spots here and there on her body.

Wow.  Hattie sold instantly.  Thank you so much!!