Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Restring My New Doll

My new doll that just arrived needs restringing and the one I bought a while back needs to have her arms restrung.  It will be easier now to restring as I have replaced all the things needed to do the job.  You just cannot do a good job of restringing without hog rings and the pliers to close the rings tightly.  You also need clamps and sometimes a long strong crochet hook. And last of all you need the right size elastic for the doll. the bigger the doll the bigger elastic you will need.  You can buy these items easily on line.
To restring a doll I get everything out I will need to use and the doll parts.  I measure and cut the length of elastic I need and join the ends together using a hog ring.  I put the head on first and bring the elastic through the body to the legs and attach the legs.  You want a very tight feel after the legs and head are attached.  If the elastic is not tight the legs and head will flop.  Also sometime in working on a large doll you need the crochet hook or a long handled pair of forceps to pull the elastic through the body.  Cut a smaller piece of elastic to join with a hog ring ti attach the arms.  Put the hook in the arm around the elastic and using forceps pull the elastic through the body and attach to hook on other arm.  If a little loose twist the arm around once or twice to take the slack out. It needs to be very tight for the arms to hold a pose. You have now painlessly given birth to a new doll.  It will take practice to cut the elastic and place the hog ring correctly, but it is well worth the time to do so. If you are restring a porcelain doll, you have to be very careful not to let the elastic snap one of the limbs in place.  Porcelain especially old porcelain can have hidden cracks that just a tap can open.   Also if working on a porcelain doll work on a padded work surface. Composition dolls are also be be treated very gently as they can crumble.   

2 comments:

  1. These sound easy to restring. The first dolls I ever restrung were American Girl dolls. They are a bit harder because they have to be unstuffed and then restuffed once the limbs have been strung. And each limb is strung separately, so it takes quite sometime to get it done. I have also restrung vintage & new Patsy dolls, and a few other similar dolls.

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  2. I dislike (will not) restring most Madame Alexander dolls. They are hard to do.
    betty

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