Another Set of Hands

As you seen from previous posts, I'm in the process of creating large figures.  With bigger bodies, one can create more detail and expression.  Two body parts are important for creating expression (or at least, there are two areas the human eye dwells upon); heads and hands.  This post details the construction of more detailed hands for the larger figures.

My small hands are made with fabric and chenille stems - works great but the joints are too rounded (if you bend a finger, your joint forms a point at the bend).  To provide a more realistic joint, I need to create bones or stiff areas.  This would only allow fingers to bend where they should.  After trying various beads and tubes, I realized that paper beads would be the perfect solution - stiff, lightweight, and free.  To create the beads, I rolled strips of glue-covered paper around fine knitting needles.

The chenile stems were threaded onto the tubes with space between the paper bones to allow for bending.  As you can see at the right, the fingers bend in a realistic manner.

Before making the fingers, I spent some time making a correctly sized template. This hand is about 50% the size of an adult hand.  If you try this yourself, don't be tempted to use a child's hand, the scale is different and won't look right.  Each finger and bone is mapped out (fingers are different sizes!) and the bones placed correctly on the chenille stems.

The fingers are sewn onto a palm of stiff interfacing (the type used for baseball caps) and the knuckles are padded with bits of felt. There is no stuffing in these hands (or any other type of hand I make) because stuffing nearly always creates a bizarre, swollen, snake-bitten affect. Look at your own hands; usually they are pretty flat.

The palms are padded with more felt near the fingers and the base of the thumb.  If you look at your own hand, you can see that these areas are a bit thicker than the rest of the palm. The finger chenille extends all the way to the wrist so that the entire hand can be inserted into the arm and the wrist bent if necessary.  Even though the hand/palm is stiffened, it is still movable and can assume any normal shape from a fist to fingers fully spread.

The outer covering is made from felted wool.  The usual method of inserting wire or chenille won't work here, so a layer of wool is pinned to the hand, edges turned under, and very carefully sewn by hand.  This was the most difficult and time consuming part of the process because the seam allowances were so tiny.  Thank goodness for felted wool.  I elected to use blue thread, so the stitches are visible.  

Stay tuned for more detail on this figure - he's quite the handsome fellow!

The Basics

The project I'm currently considering is the construction of several large, pose-able cloth figures.  The figures I make now are about 20" in length and have button joints at the shoulders, hips and knees.  Figures can not stand unassisted, but can sit and be posed in a variety of ways to increase expression.  Heads and hands do not move, but wires in the hands allow some movement.  I would like to make figures about 3 feet tall, with additional joints in the torso, neck, wrists and ankles.  So before I start describing my experiments, let's see how I make the basic button joint.

-

The small cat doll shown above has button joints in shoulders, hips and knees.   He can be posed easily and appendages hold position well due to roughness of the cloth and the tightness of the thread in the joint.  This is an historical joint that works fairly well, but is considered unsafe for children (hopefully not a concern with art dolls, but you never know!).

The knee joints shown below have gussets to allow a good connection between upper and lower legs.  This same type of gusset could be used for elbows, ankles and wrists, but the joint only allows uni-directional movement.  For wrists, this would not provide a realistic range of movement.  For a doll, that's fine, but if it's realism you're after, there are other options.  Good descriptions of many types of joints can be found in Anatomy of a Doll and Designing the Doll, (see My Reference Books for descriptions).

As diagrammed below, a button joint is fairly easy to make.  Align the torso and arms or legs and run a length of waxed linen (purchase through a book binding supply store) through all body parts and two buttons using a long doll needle.  Waxed linen is necessary to make a tough, long lasting joint and prevents having to run a thread back and forth through the doll, an exercise in frustration.  The linen cord is tied in a square knot and presto, you're done.  The benefit of using waxed linen is that the wax (and there's a lot of it) holds the knot.  I know it seems like the knot will wear our or come undone, but trust me, neither will happen and that joint will last a long time.

sketch of thread path, linen and needle

A long doll needle is very important

The little cat is a basic toy.  The next guy, a mule deer, is a figure in progress.  He's not finished, so it's easy to see his joints before final embellishments are added.  He has button joints in the shoulders, but notice that they are not easily visible.  I cover the buttons with a circle of cloth, giving the buttons a little camouflage without altering the function of the joint. If a joint will be covered with clothing, I usually don't cover the buttons.

Can you see the shoulder buttons?

The buttons have been covered with matching cloth

The knee joints shown below are different from those in the cat.  Because this figure is meant to be displayed as an art object, I made the knees with beads instead of buttons.  The joint is less bulky but still allows realistic movement.

black beads form this knee joint

The next topics will be heads and hands.  Until then, best regards.