Shooting Star

The Shooting Star is a character from the musical Rag Dolly. I've been thinking of my own ideas for the character's costume design for a while, and decided to try them out by making a doll of the character. It was also originally supposed to be a small, low-effort project made out of scraps and things I already had, but ended up taking more effort than intended.

For the basic construction, I decided to test out a different style of art doll making than what I usually use. With characters like Bruni, Corwin, and Marnie, I use a stuffed fabric body with a wire frame inserted before stuffing. With this doll, I started with the wire frame and clay features, wrapping it with quilt batting and felt to build up layers of flesh. I tightly wrapped this with the "skin" fabric where it would show, and carefully stitched it closed where it would be less visible.

Her outfit is inspired by dresses of the 1930's and 40's. This was a bit of a mistake, I didn't anticipate how many beads I'd have to sew! Each layer on her dress was a new experiment, there was no grand vision beyond some light inspiration, and I wanted to give myself the freedom to figure it out little by little.

And then I took a break for five months :) and finally came back to it in January 2025.

When I came back, I had a couple new pieces of fabric and notions to work with. First off, I continued the beads on her dress a little bit farther up.