Well, I wish I would have had someone available with a camera the other night from 8 pm-11pm when I was weighting Angelica because it was a bit hilarious!To save some of you the pain....I will tell you what I did with my Angelica.
My overall goal with Angelica is to not make her too heavy. Yes, I want her to feel and move in a real way but seriously, she is a big doll and to make her fun to play with, I need to keep her weight down. So I used the "diet plan" with her~LOL Her total weight is 12 1/2 pounds.
For the vinyl part of her legs, I place plastic pellets in her feet up to the lower part of her ankles. She is big enough and my pellets smooth and flat enough that the pellets filled in the spaces of her toes and they feel nice to the touch.
With the rest of the leg, I stuffed...I mean really stuffed, polyfill up to the top. There won't really be any reason to seal these limbs as there is no way the pellets are going to get through all that stuffing. I used a large forceps to stuff that filling in there. I did a little bit at a time and stuffed, stuffed, stuffed. The three kabob skewers are to keep a space open in order to put the wire armature into the vinyl leg when assembly is complete.
For the vinyl part of her arms the process was the same except that I did not put as many pellets in her hands. I don't want her hands to be heavy and pull her forward or pull her arms down when I am trying to pose them.
At first, I tried just putting fiber fill stuffing in her hands and arms~UGH! DO NOT TRY THAT! Well, unless you have something that is long and strong enough, yet flexible that will reach all the way to her fingers to stuff that stuffing in there. I did not and I ended up spending an hour fishing the stuffing that I did get pushed to her wrist out of there.
For the cloth part of her legs I did this:
I put a little bit of stuffing right in the tip of her hip. Then I buy the medium poly pellet bags from Dolls By Sandie and placed four of them in her thigh~one on each quadrant of her thigh, meaning going around in a circle on the outside of the inside of the fabric. I hope that makes sense! I did not just stuff them in, one on top of the other. I circled them around the armature.
~Medium pellet bags from Dolls By Sandie~I packed fiber fill then into her leg....snug but not tight tight tight. I want to be sure that her leg bends and moves yet I want her to be able to stand.
Stopping before the upper part of the knee, I left the stuffing very loose in the back of her knee where the darted fabric is. In the front of the knee, I placed another medium pellet bag. This gave her some weight to balance her and also a firmness that is a step above just the stuffing alone. The light amount of stuffing in the back of the knee will allow her knee to bend just right.
Before attaching the vinyl part of the leg to the cloth part, I filled in her lower torso. I half way filled a ladies stocking with plastic pellets and tied a knot just above the pellets so that they will not squish much. I put stuffing in the back of her "butt" and in the front of her "crotch", then I put the stocking right in the center all the way down to meet the cloth of the bottom of the torso. This gives her a nice center balance. Then I simply and snuggly filled the rest of her cloth torso with fiber fill. I like to use the stiffer, premium filling that Walmart carries. Plan on using 2-3 bags for Angelica.
For now, I have only used the string to secure her leg on, just in case I want to adjust anything. When I finish her, I will replace the string with a 14" small head , thin zip tie. Attaching the leg was funny. I laid her on the floor (I was sure to vacuum first!) with her torso towards my foot and her leg towards my belly. I wrapped my foot around her torso to hold it in towards me while I attached the vinyl leg to her cloth leg. I used my shoulder to apply pressure to her foot while I tied the string around the flange of her leg, bringing the cloth and vinyl together. It just felt like it must look funny!
I attached her arms then filled her head with stuffing and attached it to the torso. I stuffed the torso with stuffing but that made her too top heavy so I took that out. She has NO filling in her torso.
To learn how to assemble her upper body, see the link below.
~Doll Dreams Angelica Assembly~Angelica does not stand on her own. Because of the heavier torso and the cloth part of her legs, without an stiff, full body armature, she will never stand on her own.
I found a really great guy on eBay who made my awesome stand. It was very reasonable in price and I've used it for both Kristaleta (while on display at the art gallery so that she would not get bumped over. Kristaleta does not need a stand really but it shows how well this stand varies) and Angelica.
~Awesome Doll Stand~The eBay seller ID is biggecurly
I hope this helps all of you taking on the big task of reborning an Angelica.
Hugs!
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