Prison Dolls

As my next project cooks (slowly) in the oven, I thought it would be nice to have a touch of reminiscing going on, all up in this here joint. So please find, below, my collection of Prison Dolls. 

Each doll represents it's real life (fictional) owner and the idea being that the doll would go off and have all the adventurous fun whilst leaving the bad guys safely locked up inside to rot like the bad, bad men they are. 

I am not really sure where the idea for this came from but I think I was watching a lot of Shawshank and Green mile at the time so that may have had something to do with it.

I designed and screen printed the patterns on to very course cotton, researched the shit out of Criminals, Victorian and turn of the century prison wear. I then started the arduous task of designing and working out how the hell to make these things. It was all a case of trial and error as I had no books to tell me how to do anything and the internet, even in 2006, wasn't very forth coming with information. The whole on-line crafts movement hadn't really kicked off by then or at least it was still in it's very infancy. I don't even think Facebook was an actual "thing" at that point either. Scary how things move so fast.

I had to make very concise templates and made things in sections to be attached all at the end. All in all, it took me about 4 months to make them all, give or take a cutla weeks or so.

Alfie the gangster

Cane (tall) and Abel (small) the con men

Abacus the fraudulent Accountant

Anoushka the Russian spy

Bert the Burglar

You will have to excuse the crumpled background on these pictures. It would seem that constructing dolls from my imaginarium is easier then putting a hot plate to cloth. Tut tut.