The Mad Hatter

I finished my Mad Hatter and I love him!  My inspiration was Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice with Johnny Depp playing the role of the Mad Hatter.  If you have not seen the movie, I would recommend it to all who love Alice in Wonderland.

Here is a photo of the Mad Hatter with possibilities for my fabric choices.

To start my project, I used Sylvia Schorr's pattern (Murray, the Mad Hatter) as my basic template.  I changed the size to make him about 16" seated rather than 18" and I changed the arms and the clothing and face painting to match my inspirational photo.

Here is the painted face (does look a wee bit stark without his hair and hat).

To paint his face I used white and barn red acrylic paint (eye ball, teeth and lips).  I used Pigma permanent markers for detailing the teeth, nostril, eyeliner and eye shape.  To apply his very cool makeup, I used watercolour pencils and coloured chalk.  His bushy eyebrows are a snippet of the Tibetan wool that I am using for the hair (glued on).  The eyelids are make from the same cloth as his face (basically a white tightly woven fabric).

Notice that I used a plastic teddy bear joint to make his head swivel so that he can be posed. His collar will hide the slightly messy neck line.

I found the perfect wicker chair and made fabric cushions so that he could sit comfortably.

I used the inspirational photo to make his long jacket with a jaunty bow tie, pale pink collar dark purple pants.  If you notice the Mad Hatter is wearing a shoulder type strap that has all of his thread spools.  To make this I found a package of small thread spools at the dollar store.  They were still too large for the scale of this doll, so I used my scissors to cut them in half.  I the removed the thread from one half, split the plastic empty spool and added glue to reinsert the spool to the half with the thread (effectively making them half the size and a good size for this Mad Hatter):

The half size spools are at the top of the package and are only about  10 cm long.

Now for the finished piece:

He has a porcelain tea cup of course.

A close up to see his hat.  I used crayons to add colour to the rust fabric. I also added fake eyelashes that I painted white.

The back of the jacket showing his colourful flowing scarves from his pocket and his long hat band ribbon

The Mad Hatter says have a mad, mad day!