Real Doll For Quality Control of Handmade Doll Items

Doll torso

I have  a bad experience when purchasing a hand-styled doll wig. The wig, when is put on my doll head, is unbalanced. The back-ties is more to the left. The crafter/stylist said it’s ok on her doll but i’m not sure if she has tested it on her doll head. She just showed me photos of the wig ,before being sent, on wig-stand (wood made, no face of doll, usually the wig elastic won’t be too tight when it is put there). Because of that, i asked her, did you test the wig you sent to me to your doll head. She didn’t respond to that, instead kept insisting that it was impossible that the wig was unbalanced without her  knowing. (Her wigs are usually ok but when it comes to ‘hand-style’ by her, it’s risky apparently. So, I will not buy her handmade-styled wig again. I will just buy her regular wig).

While chatting to my dear friend who shopped with me, I said few things. This is what I’m going to write here.

Do you see the pic before my write starts? Yes, A DOLL TORSO. Some people may use it to display clothes, to help when making doll clothes, etc. Yet, IS IT A VALID TOOL to represent a doll clothes? I will say, NO. Doll torso is a doll torso, we don’t know which exactly bjd size it is made. Is it eluts? is it volks? is it angellstudio? No, we don’t know. Even a clothes may look good when displayed on a doll torso, it doesn’t mean, it will look good when is put on doll body, and vice versa.

I, personally, use doll torso to help me sewing doll clothes (like to mark few things, to try arranging some decoration on clothes, and so on) and to give a rough look before I finish sewing and put it on real doll for real fitting. Yet, when it looks bad on doll torso, I don’t really take it seriously unless, it looks really really bad and not convincing, then I’ll take out my doll body even the sewing process is still half way. Using REAL doll to do quality control before my product is presented is a MUST. Even if it’s just for my own doll, not for sale, FITTING ON A REAL DOLL IS A MUST.

I asked the wig stylist whether she tried the wig she sent to me on a doll head because i know what is a wig stand. It has no face. So we don’t know where the nose is. We know, the nose is ‘dividing’ our face into two. It’s in the middle (normally). Wig stand has no eyes. The eyes of the doll, they are the ‘border’ of left and right face area that shouldn’t be covered by hair, unless it is the style; Even if it is, then the eyes position is important, too. Wig stand ball is not the same as doll head. The position of the top centre is different from real doll. The top centre of the doll head which will also be used as another control when putting a wig on it. Wig stand ball size as well as (again) shape are not as same as doll head. Even one doll head at one line of size can be differ in shape and size (8-9 inch, the doll head can be 8,8,5,9 inch). From what i see, it looks smaller (because it’s for display, it shouldn’t be ruin elasticity of the wig fabric). Using real doll is better as its size and shape are much more exact to ‘hold’ the wig fabric so it wouldn’t turn around when is being styled. Yet, even if someone still want to style wig on a wig stand, it is highly recommended to use real doll head for quality control because aside of shape and size, it has nose, eyes, and ‘exact’ top centre of the head. I think, when it comes to sell, someone has to make a sacrifice; use the available head to be used as quality control or buy a cheaper head but still at one line of size. We know there are few brands that sell less expensive than the other.

Our product may look the best or slightly best on different doll sometimes. That’s why, sometimes, we have to specific based on what doll size and BRAND (for exactly) we make this product. We can add warning that it may fit on other doll brand at same size line but can’t guarantee the same look and good fitting.

We can buy doll torso and wig stand, but we must have real doll if we want to sell doll items and use the doll for last quality control, even if it’s just head accessories or necklace. Believe me, it’s DIFFERENT.