Wednesday's Child/3 : Progress

Wednesday's child is full of woe...
In this ongoing series about the inmates of the Newcastle Industrial School 1867-1871, I have been sharing the progress of my proposed art installation for the "Stitched Up" project and exhibition.
I have previously written about the background story on March 1 and then a couple of weeks later on March 16 about the process.I am using to create 193 stick dolls representing the girls who were at the school during those four years. Please refer to these previous posts to put everything into perspective I am happy to report that since then, I have made more progress. Today, I am sharing more of the process, so that by the end of this series, these posts will serve as a tutorial as well as information about the project. In the last post, I ended with the sticks at the stage pictured below....

Sticks collected from the bush - covered with aluminium foil,
two way stretch fabric and then cotton and stitched - adding skirts . Sometimes, I add the skirt after creating a head for the doll, as I like to add clothing to match the 'personality'!

Sculpting faces with polymer clay - each face is different.- no moulds here!

Faces cured in a domestic oven and holes for attachment drilled by hand.

Addition of some shading to highlight features

Attaching the faces with stitch to the prepared 'bodies' - note the curved needle.

In the next post in this series, I will share how I create the arms for these dolls....

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