Quimper Hittys

Happy ScrapHappy Day! 

ScrapHappy Day is the 15th of the month, when a  group of bloggers each post a blog about using up their scraps! Any material of genuine scrap status is allowed:  I have used scraps of wood; yarn; and fabric.   I’ve also seen posts about: scrap silver; polyethylene; paper; electronic equipment; metal; and I think just about everything!

Today I am repairing some dolls…

…three little doll sisters, with broken china shoulder plates…

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…which came to me via a French Flea Market.

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Guttersnipe and Mudlark have carved wooden bodies, but I decided to try and repair the shoulder plates, and make cloth bodies and new limbs for the three French dolls.

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This is the littlest sister upon arrival….

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…and the middle-sized one being prepared for treatment.

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I modelled replacement Shoulder plates for the two smaller sisters using Milliput epoxy. On the biggest sister there wasn’t much of a neck to attach a shoulder to, so I just wodged a cylinder of epoxy into the neck hole, and flared it inside so it would stay in place. It will take a bit more work to bring her back to playability…

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…but here is the littlest doll before and during the epoxy repair…her shoulder plate got sanded smooth after this photo.

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I think repairing broken doll heads doesn’t quite count as using up scraps, but in order to finish the dolls I used wood and cloth leftovers from other projects. Using scraps of chestnut wood, I carved arms and legs for the French doll sisters…

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…and here they are in progress – the littlest doll in the left hand bowl. The middle sized doll in the right hand bowl is just waiting for me to carve her some legs!

In the background are some strips of Provençal  fabric…

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…which I used to make cloth bodies for the dolls (French dolls should have French cloth bodies, right)! The fabric is leftover from the Provençal fabric quilt I made in 2020. The paper pattern is from an owl doll that I made a couple of years ago from a Jenny Barnett doll kit. This was for the middle sized sister.

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I used Gail Wilson’s Hitty pattern used for the smallest-sized sister’s body.

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Both their bodies were stuffed with Walnut shells, as the slightly heavier filling helped to counterbalance the weight of the heads.

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Here is the littlest doll being assembled…

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…and here she is having her head glued on with E6000.   I used painter’s tape to fix the shoulders in place under pressure, and then she had to wait for 48 tedious hours before she could play.

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Here is the middle-sized girl, having undergone the E6000 treatment.  I didn’t like the thick shelf at the edge of the shoulder plate, though it was necessary as there was very little ceramic for the epoxy to stick to. Unfortunately body shape combined with the arm style impeded the arm movement.  So I detached the arms and made an outer “skin” of the same fabric…

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…and sewed the arms back on using a hinge instead of  “through the body cords”.  Having done one of each kind of body I can see what I would like to do for Sister #3… but that is a project for the future.

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And meanwhile the smallest French sister is ready to play with Mudlark and Guttersnipe, and the middle sister is looking down her nose at the idea of such frolicking.  The biggest sister is hoping that I will hurry up and finish her too.

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That’s my July 2026 Scrap Happy contribution! Thanks so very much to Kate and Gun who originally came up with the idea of ScrapHappy, and kept it going for eleven years! For various reasons they have retired from moderating the group, but I offered to help because I love the idea so much.

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I love reading about the interesting and inspiring ideas that people are willing to share and the clever ways that so many bits and pieces have been saved from the scrap heaps!

These are links to the lovely scrap people in the group at present – please check them out:

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And if you think you’d like to join the group, send me an email at:

quimperhitty at gmail dot com

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