My home doesn’t lend itself to hosting doll classes. We have a lot of square feet, but it’s an old farm house and the shapes and sizes of some of the rooms are rather strange. I have my kiln in one end of my kitchen, and have to unplug my clothes dryer out in the laundry area to plug it in. Oh, me! We’ve gotten used to stepping over the electrical cord when the Kiln is in use, and scheduling the laundry around firings. Not ideal, but doable. The real rub is that there isn’t anyplace to have a class of people working on dolls.
My current class is being held at the Senior Center, which has worked out well so far, but it took some time to work the kinks out when we were planning how we would manage to get everything we need to the Center and home again after each class. We settled on those sets of three plastic drawers in a cart, using a drawer for each of the students. We put a sticky note inside the front of each drawer with the student’s name on it, and all of their things fit in it quite nicely. I kept one of the drawers to hold what I need for the class, and I can get it organized as I think of things I should take.
We were able to wrap the SFGW in paper towels and put it in the drawers, and did the same with the bisque, but what to do with the china painted pieces that hadn’t been fired yet? These pieces can’t be wrapped and laying them carefully in flats with paper towels in the bottom wouldn’t work — any movement caused by the motion of the car would result in smudging or rubbing off paint. What to do?
After mulling the problem over for several days, it finally struck me that placing each freshly painted pieces upright on small posts or dowels on a board, arranged far enough apart so pieces couldn’t come into contact with each other might be just the ticket. I talked my idea over with my hubby, and we agreed that the dowels needed to be long enough to keep long arms and legs safely in place, and be spaced far enough apart to accommodate the larger heads, and he took himself off to Lowe’s for supplies.
We used the parts of a 28” doll to help determine the proper spacing. Since we wanted our carry boards to be easy and convenient to handle, we decided that each board would hold the parts for two dolls, and 36” by 10” by 5/8” thick seemed adequate. We used 1/2” dowels for the arms and legs, being sure that they were long enough to hold for big pieces and small enough in diameter so that the arms of small dolls would still fit. We settled on the lengths of 7 1/2” for the legs , and 4 ½” for the arms. For the heads we chose dowels about 1” in diameter and 7 1/2” long. We rechecked our spacing, marked the spots, and hubby drilled holes the sizes of the dowels about half way through the board, added glue and put the dowels in place. Once the glue was set, he painted our carry boards white for aesthetics, and we were ready to give it a try.
I’m happy to say that the carry boards or transport boards work just fine. It is a nice idea to drape a square of flannel over the pegs to keep the porcelain from rattling on the posts while traveling, but other then that, no further changes have been required. A simple solution to a sticky problem, and we can relax and enjoy the time spent helping develop new doll makers.
There are detailed instructions for making your own transport boards posted under Freebies. Hope you find them useful!
