It’s funny how things that once were strange and unfamiliar become ordinary over time.

When I started making dolls, I knew that I wanted them to have long thin legs. I’m not sure exactly why, or where I first saw and stored away an image of a doll with long thin legs. But there it was, buried in my memory, waiting to pop out, when the time was right.

Actually, now I think about it, it could be down to Play School, which I watched avidly as a pre-schooler. It was my favourite television programme, back in the days when there were very few television programmes at all, and even fewer for children. Play School was my early-childhood must-watch.

I remember wanting Brian Cant, one of the main presenters, to be my dad. Not because there was anything wrong with my own dad (apart from him being at work most of the time). But to my young eyes Brian looked like he would be great fun to have as a dad.Anyway, I digress. Play School had a selection of toys, which were stars in their own right, every bit as much as the presenters.

Everyone remembers iconic handmade Humpty and the somewhat sinister, dirty-faced plastic doll Hamble (who chose that weird name, I always wondered? I certainly didn’t know anyone called Hamble in real life).

My own favourites were the Teds, Big and Little, because they reminded me of my own Ted, a 1930s Chad Valley bear that had been my dad’s when he was a baby, and to whom I was utterly devoted.

Also amongst the Play School toys was a rag doll called Jemima. That’s her, in the blue floral frock (very 1970s Laura Ashley!) in the picture above.

I can’t find any better photos of her to illustrate this, but in my memory Jemima has elongated stripy legs.

So maybe she’s to blame for my fixation on long-legged cloth dolls.

Anyway… 

It’s been a while since I made any larger cloth dolls, the ones with the long legs. I sold off a few for peanuts at recent fairs, which made me think of them. They had been hanging around idle for far too long.

As you probably know, I’ve been working on much smaller dolls recently (about four or five inches tall, maximum), spending far too long wearing strong spectacles and getting achey hands from embroidering tiny faces, messing about with bits of clay and working out how to make miniature clothes and shoes.

I can waste literally hours, lost in a world of smallness. Faffing with bits of fabric and wire, plotting Lilliputian creations and stitching the tiniest stitches I can manage to bring them into being.

But this week I’ve had to put my less strong specs on again, having received a commission request for a cousin to this fellow: It came as a huge surprise to find that I had almost forgotten how to do it; make bigger things, I mean.

I still have a pattern for my bigger dolls basic body shape, so that was no problem. But I tend to freehand the arms and legs, and first time around Grumpy Lion’s legs turned out too little and too thin. Even the second and final version has legs that are longer and thinner than I originally intended.

I was advised, when I started making dolls, to make their legs fatter, as thin legs were a route to madness. I, of course, completely ignored this sound advice, as these, the legs of my very first cloth doll, show…Thinking back to when the original Grumpy Lion Mark One first emerged, he had the thinnest legs I could manage at the time. 
It made me smile to think that what was once the limit of lion lankiness now seemed… well, large.

I remember how I struggled with making small things at first. I felt like I had big fat fingers and too many – or not enough – thumbs. It was tricky and challenging – but I was determined that I could do it, if only I tried hard enough.

And yes, I have better tools and techniques nowadays – no more poking at long thin things with chopsticks for hours on end for me, thank goodness! But it’s more than that. It’s like my mind has tuned itself in to the tinyness over time, so that the once seemingly impossible is now… normal.

As I say, it’s funny how things that once were strange and unfamiliar and difficult become ordinary and easy over time.

I think there’s a life lesson in there somewhere.