I had no idea that fiddling about with wire would turn out to be so popular.

The picture below of the wire beds I made is, as of now, my most liked Instagram post ever!

Amazing!In my previous post I did say that occupants for the beds would be a story for another time. Well, that time is now.

I decided to go with a Goldilocks sort of idea, and make a little dreaming girl in her nightie, to repose on one of the beds…

Her body and head are fabric, her arms and legs are made from clay. And she is the first doll that I have ever coiffed using proper doll hair (not yarn / wool / thread).

I bought a couple of little packets of the hair to see how it looked. It wasn’t expensive and, like many things in this life, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but actually turned out to be a bit of a ‘mare.

This sort of doll hair seems, from my research, to be more usually used on clay dolls rather than cloth ones. What I hadn’t reckoned with is that it is too fine to just sew in place on the doll’s head, as I would usually do.

I rapidly discovered why this stuff is often referred to as “wigging” – because you have to literally make a wig out of it before you put it on your little bald doll’s head!

This wig-making enterprise entails the use of glue – never a friend of mine, especially when you apply it to fibres that are considerably thinner than human hair.

I ended up with hairy fingertips, a hairy tablecloth, hairy clothing, and hairs up my nose, in my mouth and just about everywhere else they could float to within reasonable sneezing distance.

Still, I think the effort of becoming a miniature wigmaker was just about worth it… I also decided to make a little suitcase to go under the bed because, you know, I hadn’t wasted enough time picking glue and bits of sticky, tickly doll hair off things.

I then got a bit carried away making bedding.

As some people may remember, I used to make and sell vintage fabric quilts, cushions and pillows…

So making vintage fabric doll bedding is a bit like a return to my roots – and I remembered exactly why I used to enjoy patchwork and cushion-making so much. Selecting the perfect fabric combinations, the rhythm of snipping and stitching and pressing, pootling from sewing machine to ironing board and back again…

Well. It turns out that all of the above is even more enjoyable when working on a miniature scale! So now it’s just a matter of producing beds for these to go on. And so to bed, as they say.

The plan is to have the finished beds on sale at The Secret Garden Craft Fair on June 22nd. My fingers and thumbs are bracing themselves for the onslaught of wire on flesh that will be required to produce them.

Perhaps I should make a pile of mini quilts and pillows to sell on their own? Something for people’s own little dolls to snuggle up in. You could buy a little quilt and a couple of pillows and maybe pop them into a bed-sized small cardboard box when you get home, should funds not run to a fancy iron bed.

After all, the fancy beds aren’t really any friendlier for little fingers than they are for my own, being made of prickly wire (the beds that is, not the fingers!) and therefore unsuitable for children to play with.

And so to bed, or not to bed, that is the question.

What do you think? ♥