Rat Headed Girl Doll

This rat-headed lady is what I've been working on the past couple of weeks!  Remember the doll parts I posted last week?  This doll has a human shaped body with a rat's head.  I'm very proud of this doll.  She's roughly 11" tall when standing. 

"Theriocephaly" is the condition of having the body of a human and the head of an animal.  Every culture that I can think of has stories of animal-headed gods and monsters.  Something about the concept has really grabbed onto my imagination, and I'm expecting to make many more of these animal-headed dolls. 

Her jointed legs let her sit.

Like this rat-headed doll?  She's for sale on my etsy.

Her posable tail lets her stand by herself... but she's not super stable.

The body is made out of raw silk noil, that I dyed to a fleshy tan using black tea, allspice, and a little bit of vanilla, before shoving the body parts into the oven to dry.  My kitchen smelled really good throughout the dying process!  The dye didn't take quite as well as I had hoped, so I had to go back and repaint over the seams afterwards, which wasn't fun at all.  For the next batch of dolls, I'm going to pre-dye the fabric before I assemble the pieces, and then do a second dye bath afterwards to age the fabric pieces.  I dyed four doll bodies at once, so expect a few more over the next couple of weeks.  Her shoulders are thread jointed so the arms can move up and down, and the legs are thread jointed with vintage coconut buttons.

Look at her beady little eyes!

Her head is made out of wool felt, and I embroidered her features using cotton embroidery thread.  This is the first time I've ever used embroidery on felt this way, so I'm really happy with how it came out.  I usually try to avoid using felt because I feel that it's almost a cheater's medium, and because so many people pair chunky blanket embroidery with crude wool shapes, and it often just looks terrible.  Lately I've been loosening up my stance on felt a bit, although I still feel that most people overuse felt, and for the wrong projects!  Her eyes are solid black glass, and her ears are made of reclaimed veg tan leather that I shaped a bit using warm water and some patience.

A full body view of her standing.

The dress is fully removable, and is made up of some scraps of reclaimed silk charmeuse and cotton gauze that I've had lying around forever.  The effect is a little ragged and a little somber, but I'm just in love with her overall tan-brown-black color scheme.  The next doll will be a bit brighter, but knowing my predilection for old looking neutrals, probably not much.

And the view from behind!

The tail turned out especially awesome.  It's made out of wire wrapped in a torn strip of muslin, the process of which I'm gonna keep to myself for a while, because it ends up looking so perfect!  I embroidered using single strands of three different colors of floss, to give the tail the mottled scaly look that most rat tails have.