Grainger County Tomato Festival

I am getting ready for a craft booth at the Grainger County Tomato Festival this weekend.  We will be in booth number 50, and I hope to see you all there.

 I was given the opportunity to be there at this festival kind of at the last minute with only 2 weeks to get ready for it so most of my items are going to be just doll kits this time.    Here are three of the dolls that will be available as kits.

Wow!  It has been almost a year since I posted anything here, and I know I got some explaining to do!

My only excuse is that my daughter went back to work and gave me her Sugar Glider Bonding Pouch business two years ago, and it just kind of took off this past year keeping me really busy taking care of it.

I have really missed working on my dolls though, and I think that maybe I might find time to work on dolls again now that my sister is helping me some with the bonding pouches.

I want to show you my next two projects.

I made 10 dress sets for each of these dolls about two years ago, and now I want to finish them by April 1st if possible.  I will post pictures here of my progress.

Ups and Downs and in and Outs of Embroidery

I have owned a Pfaff embroidery machine for many years now, and I have always loved this machine so after I started making primitive dolls I wanted to see if it was possible to machine embroider letters on a doll's apron in such a way that the letters would look hand embroidered since my hand embroidered letters did not look all that good to me.

My problem with my embroidery machine was in communication with the computer though!  My computer has the Windows 7 operating system, and the Pfaff  company stopped updating the 2170 embroidery machines after Windows XP so there was no way to get them to communicate with each other.  I finally found an old laptop with windows XP to use with it, but the mouse I bought to go with the laptop just works for a minute and quits, and the stylus thing on the laptop just drove me crazy trying to use it.

I finally found a font set in an outline stitch like I was looking for on the internet, and had already put several letters into the laptop when I got stuck on an O.  The stylus would not let me move the O where I needed it to go.  It would look fine until I tried to move it, but no matter where I tried to touch it to move it into place it got bigger then the other letters.  I finally gave up in disgust.

Wow. I have not checked out this blog for a while.

The biggest part of my pictures are now gone, and I don't know what happened to them.  I will do some investigating and see if I can get them back on here.

A lot has happened since I was on here last though.  My dear hubby passed away from 4th stage lung cancer complications, I gave our home back to the mortgage company, lived with my youngest daughter and her family for a few months, had a 2nd heart attack, and then got my own apartment a couple of blocks from my youngest daughter's house. 

My New Ad in Country Sampler

I submitted a doll to Country Sampler for their holiday showcase last October that did really well for me so when they asked me if I want to do it again this year I said sure. 

I can't really show a picture yet of the doll that I submitted to them, but I can show you a picture of the one that I submitted last year. 

I think that my Let It Snow Annie turned out looking really special, and I was fortunate enough to find some similar fabric to make some new ones for this year.

I met an old boyfriend today.

I took my dolls to the Art in Seargeant Park Show in Lafollette today with my sister Mildred and ran into an old boyfriend from my high school days named John LaMaire.

John has always been a talented artist, and he was now a member of the Campbell County Artists Association.

He and his young daughter were setup with his paintings there at the park there today.  I did not recognize him and would have walked on by without even saying hello if Mildred had not pointed him out to me.

I enjoyed meeting John and his teenage daughter today, and I hope that his daughter did not think anything strange by the hug that John and I exchanged when we parted.  There was no danger there since I have a thing for bad boys.  I searched until I found the baddest boy in town, and we have been sort of happily married for more then 35 years.   My hubby was so bad that I gave him the much deserved name of King Butthole early in our marriage, and he probably gave me the name of wicked witch or something to that sort.  Of course hubby and I have mellowed out considerably now so that the only thing we usually argue about is what's for dinner!  Unfortunately this argument usually happens once a day! LOL!

While I was at the park today I also got my Buzzard Nodder finished.  This buzzard was made to look like a cartoon buzzard that I found on the internet.  He turned out just as goofy looking, but I am still not quite satisfied with my pattern yet.  I want to give him sewn on eyelids instead of having them painted on like they are now, and maybe give him an orange beak before I call him finished... but .....here he is......Big Drum Roll Please!  Taa Daa!

Where has this year gone?

I was cleaning out my sewing room the other day and ran across some pictures that I taken of some strange looking little birds that I had wanted to use the pictures to create some new nodder patterns, but somehow six whole years came and went without me even getting started on them. I wanted to post just one of these pictures here so you can see what I liked about them.

Got to go now! I think I will tell everyone what I tell my grandkids when I drop them off at school! Try to be good today! Okay?

Working on 6" Mini Doll Legs Today

I ran a fever this whole weekend along with being congested and having a sore throat, an ear ache, and a tooth ache so I have not felt like doing much of anything, but today I am tired of just laying around the house feeling sorry for myself so I decided to get back into stuffing these little doll arms and legs.

I have been making these little dolls for a while now and wanted to post a couple of pictures here so that you can see how I stuff them.

These dolls are just 6" tall when finished.  The head and body can be stuffed by just using your fingers to stuff small bits and pieces of fiberfil into the bodies, but the are and legs are not easy to stuff.

I use a regular kitchen funnel and a wooden dowel to stuff them with. Just choose one that fits the opening fairly good, and hold the funnel inside the opening as you push a small piece of stuffing about the size of a quarter into the bottom of the funnel.  If you don't hold them together the arm or leg will pop off the funnel before it goes in.   Stuff it only halfway because you don't want your doll's arms to not stick out at a weird angle.

  

Staining and Blushing the Bag Holder Dolls

I don't know how everyone else blushes their doll's cheeks, but I do my doll's cheeks while the tea stain is still wet.

I add 5 tea bags to a small pot of boiling water, and take it off the heat to cool. While it was cooling I lay my dolls on top of plastic shopping bags to protect my table.

Make sure to get both sides of the doll well covered with the tea.

To blush the doll' cheeks open your cheek paint and barely dip a damp foam paint brush into the paint.

Then rub the foam brush back and forth onto a corner of the plastic shopping bag.

Then rub the brush on the doll's cheeks. Try to keep the two painted cheeks the same size, but do not be concerned that there seems to be to much paint on the cheeks at this point.

Next take a paper towel and lightly rub from the front to the back of the doll's head or around in circles on the painted edge of both cheeks to smooth out the paint.

Maybe you can do better then me, but I don't think that my doll's cheeks turned out to bad!

Then lay the doll in front of the fan to dry.

Well my break is over so back to work.

Welcome to Ragged Britches Primitive Doll Store!

The dolls that I make are not washable nor meant to be played with by children. They were made for adult doll collectors to decorate their homes with.


I love dolls and I have been making them since I was 13 years old and needed a present for my little sister Audrey. I did not have any money to buy her a present with so I made her a set of little dolls from my Mom's quilt scraps and a pattern that I found in a McCalls magazine. Audrey loved getting the little dolls as much as I loved making them. That was over 40 years ago, and I am still making dolls today.


I am located just off Western Avenue in Knoxville TN which is about a 45 minute drive from The Great Smokey Mountains.

I do not have a storefront here in Knoxville where you can come and visit me, but I will be at Dollywood's Harvest Festival during the whole month of October so stop by and see me.