I remember playing with dolls. My dad wouldn't allow me to play with white dolls and no black dolls were in the community so I had to make them. They were unique and personal.
Made from mostly sticks, pine valves, and string the bodies of the dolls didn't look like much. The pine valves were thorny and we called them wire bras. We would take the leaves for clothes that the dolls wore.
They remind me of the modern Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy type dolls. We put mud on the dolls to be the head so they would have brown faces. We would roll the mud into balls for a complete face. Before the mud was dry we pressed small items into the mud for eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows. The eyes were small rocks. Smaller rocks would be the eyebrows or anything that we could find to fit.
You sewed everything together with a pine needle. We played with them until they dried up and you would make another one.
My grandmother made them depict a child like me. There was always extra material to make a dolls dress so she would sew matching dresses for me and my toy.
There was always different vines and grass growing in the backyard. We used this to our advantage.
We pulled goose grass; it had long red roots. The bulb would be the head of the doll. We would braid the roots of the grass for hair. The remaining strings of grass were either used as arms or the body. If the grass was long enough we would make feet by bunching them together.
My rag doll rarely went outside. I didn't want it to get messed up. We played with them until they dried up and you would make another one.
A lot of the dolls were imaginary since they didn't really look like anything but they were our children. We took care took care of them until they dried up and we would make some more. You would make it look like what you wanted to look like.
Leave a comment