Swaps and Challenges

The people who make cloth dolls are creative and imaginative. Making a doll leads to making another one and another until they are everywhere. Because these folks tend to get together in one way or another, their creations are shared and admired by other doll artists. Cloth Doll designers teach new skills and techniques and new ideas emerge. Someone will come to a doll meeting or on-line discussion with an idea for a new type of doll or theme. Because these ideas are usually interesting or unique, the suggestion may arise to create a competition to showcase and develop different forms of the idea.

The creations are shared either in photos or mailed to a central location. Sometimes, voting or judging happens to determine a certain criteria. (most imaginative, most decorated, humor, best use of certain materials,etc.)

Some of these competitions come from the designers and artists who develop the ideas into patterns The term used for this type of sharing is known in the fabric art and cloth doll world as a Challenge.

These events are not exclusive to cloth dolls since they occur in many areas of the cloth art world including quilts, clothing, wall hangings, fabric art and stuffed animals.

One of the most impressive is the Hoffman Challenge which has just recently completed judging for the 2003 competition. Every year, a team from the Hoffman Fabrics Company chooses a specific Hoffman fabric design and issues a challenge to quilt, clothing, and doll makers to create original items using the fabric.  The entries are juried by the challenge curator and a group of assistants. Then a team of judges selects the award winners. These winners receive a prize and the entries travel around the USA and Canada to be exhibited by quilt and other fiber guilds, shops, museums, and textile shows.

Many on-line and in-person cloth doll clubs and groups generate challenges among their members using a contact person, and posting skill level, deadline and criteria for the challenge. Friends of Cloth Dolls Club has many ongoing and completed challenges which are based on ideas from the group such as:

Goddess/Muse--wall hanging, 10-12",

Flower Doll (Make a doll, using flowers somewhere as a theme)

Stitch Witch--witch or troll

Monster Mash--a Halloween type doll

Black and White Challenge--12"-36", using 1 piece black, one white, and 2 black and white prints.

Midsummer's Night Dream 2002--a doll representing a character from the play

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