Not Quite A Rescue

Here I am again with the final installment on Snoozie Thumbelina. In the previous post about her I had disassembled the doll and washed her hair and limbs. I was quite pleased with how shiny her hair turned out. It was not all that tangled to begin with but it was coarse and dull.

Normally when I get an old doll like this I would not take her apart but the lack of stuffing made her look odd because the mechanism inside her had moved around inside her body. I have re-stuffed teddy bears and reattached cloth doll heads and bodies before so I didn’t feel the task was beyond my skills. Of course I might be wrong! Let’s see.

Part Three: Snoozie gets stuffed

I decided that I would ditch all the rubber foam inside Snoozie and replace it with polyester fibrefill as I knew I had a bag with my crafty stuff. I discovered that the red plastic bulb did contain a squeaker and after I had cleared out the foam stuffing that was blocking it up the squeaker still worked. It doesn’t really sound like something that belongs in a doll and I have seen no mention of this in anything I have read so far but decided to put it back inside Snoozie when I re-stuffed her.

Here she is back in one piece. I stuffed her with clean white polyester fibrefill. I placed the squeaker underneath her mechanism and she now squeaks when her tummy is squeezed. I still think it is an odd sound for a doll. Her body looks much more normal but I did have a few issues with putting her back together.

It was easy to pop her head back on but the first time I did it I found that her eyes were stuck shut. This obviously has something to do with the way I inserted the rod into her head. I had another go and got her eyes open but now they don’t shut properly so I will have to revisit this. I may get her a new mechanism at some stage in the future as you can still buy them I think. To make it easier to take her head off next time I removed the wire that was in her neck opening. I didn’t really like the way it was poking out of her neck. For now I have replaced it with some strong thread because I may want to take her apart again but after that I will use either elastic thread or a cable tie. I’ve seen these in modern dolls and used one myself to repair the head on an Op Shop doll once.

I also want to get her a better outfit. I am not sure if her little dress is original or not. Most of the photos I’ve seen show the dolls in leggings and a smock top. She at least needs some knickers to cover the cotton body but I may knit her a proper little outfit once I find where I packed my knitting needles. I have lots of wool.

I hope you have enjoyed this little look at a popular doll from the 1960s. She will be going downstairs to join the rest of the Ideal family dolls, Posey Walker, Goody Two Shoes, Crissy, Giggles and the Tearie Dearies. When we have decorated the new doll and bear room we might have an Ideal Corner for them all to live in.