That’ll teach me not to brag

Probably every last one of you has made a 28” Ballerina at some time in your doll making history, since it was so popular awhile back, but I never did. I’m more into character dolls that I can dress in old fashioned clothes and show that even “back then” kids were kids, no matter how much their moms’ might have tried to show them off in the “children are to be seen but not heard” mode, and ballerinas just didn’t strike my fancy. However, one of my new doll students was browsing through the binder of pictures of dolls for which I have molds and saw a ballerina doll. It was part of a batch of molds that I bought from my last doll instructor when she and her husband retired and hit the road in their RV, and wouldn’t you know it, she chose that doll as the one she wanted to make. Since I have had no experience with it, I decided that I should probably make one too, just to be sure I knew how to get it together.

My husband enjoys helping pour my dolls, and I’m usually grateful to be spared the heavy lifting as I have a back problem, and boy, was I ever thankful for his help with this one! Those legs are HUGE, and even empty those molds are heavy! The pouring went just fine. I was worried about fitting them in my kiln, which is a Skutt 8/18. I had to lay them on a shelf corner to corner for soft firing, and they came within half an inch of touching the kiln walls on both ends. That fact right there got me worrying about the bisque firing, and I began to rue the day that I’d brought the stupid molds home in the first place.

The soft firing went fine. I wrapped the legs for the student in paper towels to transport with the rest of the doll parts to class on our next scheduled day and set about cleaning mine. I wanted to stay a couple steps ahead of my student so I could answer her questions as she went along. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men!

Time to fire those legs rolled around and I didn’t have much choice about how to do it. I figured I could lay them back down on the shelf the way I had the first time they were in the kiln, or use my preferred method of standing them up to avoid potential sagging along their length. Since I’ve always had the best luck standing up my legs and arms (as I so stupidly bragged about in one of my recent articles) I opted for that position. The problem was that the legs were too long to stand up in my kiln, and if they hadn’t been too long, the doll was supposed to be standing on tiptoe, so there was no flat surface on that end, and the top of the legs ended in a chisel hip shape. Hummmm ….

Okay, that being the case I’d obviously have to tip the legs sideways at about a 70° angle to clear the top of the kiln and have good circulation around the foot end. I thought about making supports to lean against from shelf posts, but decided to put my half shelf in, pad the edge with prop, and lean them against that. It seemed like it would be more stable, and given the shape of the legs, I was concerned about them tipping over. So far so good. Now to figure out how to stabilize the bottom end. I decided to let the very top of the hip set on the Silica Sand coated shelf and stick some prop under the side that didn’t touch the shelf. Sounds reasonable, don’t you think? I stuffed a bit of prop loosely in the open end of the legs and leaned them against the shelf as planned, and fired her up.
Well, darn! When I opened the kiln, the ankles had flattened on the side against the shelf and the rim and groove around the top of the leg for attaching the fabric body was squished shut where it had been supported by the prop.

Round two! We poured and cleaned another set of legs. I still felt like standing the legs was my best bet, so I gave the problem some more thought. I had used pieces of the old prop shelf sheets the last time, and that’s stiffer then regular prop, so I tried replacing it with regular prop on the shelf edge and under the lip of the leg. I arranged the prop on the shelf edge in more of a cupped shape, thinking that would keep the ankle from flattening, and fired her up again.

Doll class came and went, and now I had the student’s legs needing fired before the next class, which was a week away. Okay, that shouldn’t be a problem. I mean, surely I’d worked out a solution and the legs should come out okay now, right?

Wrong. One ankle still flattened and the rim and groove on the other leg was squished all the way shut again. That really set me to mumbling under my breath!

Round three! This time I not only cupped the prop draped over the shelf edge, and made it thicker and more exaggerated in shape, but took a thin sheet of the stiffer shelf prop and laid it in the cupped area against the ankle for more support of the shape of the ankle. Okay, now the other end. I decided to do away with the prop on that end altogether, and instead formed mounds of Silica Sand for the slant of the leg to rest against, and holding my breath, fired her up for the third time.

I can just hear you guys laughing at me. Didn’t any of you have trouble with those stupid legs? Well, I opened the kiln again and finally everything went as planned and I had a great pair of legs. No, not me … my doll! Anyway, that’s the last time I’ll feel like bragging about my lack of problems firing legs! Teach me to open my big mouth!