Many, and I mean many years ago, when Moody Voodies was in its infancy, we used to sew everything by hand. Every body, every arm, every head, etc, etc, you get the idea. It was time consuming to say the least. Of course, our dolls were very different back then, and had a more rustic feel to them. We still actually have a few of those little fellas in a zip lock bag, maybe in the future they might be worth something!
At the start of our little enterprise, we had no idea if the demand for our dolls would actually be there, as we were far from being experts in the field. My only experience with a sewing machine was when I was at high school, and we had to make stuffed pillows for an art project. We all got to choose a design we liked to decorate said pillow, and I choose that
lovable cartoon cat, Garfield! It actually came out pretty cool. Not sure where it ended up, but I did impress my parents and grand parents with my new found skill! Fast forward (coughs into hand to muffle actually dates) many many years, and we as a fledgling business find ourselves needing by a sewing machine.
At first, we were a little reluctant to spend any large amounts of money on an actual sewing machine, opting for one of those hand held do-dars. Well, firstly no, just no! Those handheld machines are fine in a pinch, but for anything beyond a wobbly ‘not so straight line’ and they are pretty awful.
At that time in Moody Voodies history, we didn’t have much money (still kinda true) to spend on equipment, especially as we didn’t know if we could action make a living making art dolls!
So, for quite a long time we opted to make our Voodies out of other materials, including clay and sticks and any other adornments we could find. I’m sure some of those are still out there somewhere, as we still have one or two laying around that have survived.
Hand held Singer sewing do-dar
Eventually, we decided to take the plunge and buy our very first sewing machine. This was a very basic Singer simple machine. It was amazing! Coming from the handheld device to an actual proper sewing machine was truly a huge leap forward! It made making our rag/cloth dolls way easier than the previous method. A doll that would have taken several hours to hand sew and complete, now took just a few hours!
