So, as I mentioned in previous post, a long time ago I created a Stinger called Sophie Devereux. I never did write about her background properly, but lately I’ve been kinda inspired by the IT Stinger dolls to make her a reality in the way I did with Jewel.
I should make something clear right up front. Sourcing this doll and the material to make her clothing sent me all over the world, and for that reason, she is still in some ways a work in progress. So although this is my introducing her, there may yet be more to do.

I decided to make her out of a Laka Orion doll from the Color Infusion line by IT. Of course, the moment I decided this, she disappeared from Ebay completely. I hunted around and eventually found her on a French website. This actually made me very happy, because, of course, Sophie is French. This way, my doll is too. Parfait!

Because these dolls are quite hard to find and expensive, and because I’m not an insane doll collector who thinks that that kind of price  for a doll to rip apart is fine and dandy, I haven’t done anything about her face paint at the moment. I think that, maybe, at some point I will get this done by someone who knows what they are doing – I’m happy to play around with bait vintage heads that cost a couple of bucks, but this is a bit different. As she’s a Stinger, though, extreme makeup isn’t really important, so we’ll see. Just right now, I guess, she still is “Laka”. (Laka means nothing in my mental world, though, so I don’t wholly care).

I’ll come to the outfit in a minute, but first, lets talk about the hair.

Now, Laka has some nice blond hair. I’ve never liked blond dolls that much, but I agonised over this and decided that Sophie in her Stinger gear needed to be blond, even though in Jewel’s World she has reverted to her natural dark hair. This is her in the eighties, therefore I chose the blond doll and not the brunette.

This is her pretty much out of the packet, after washing and combing through her hair. It’s fine, but it’s not “Sophie” somehow. I always wrote about her having wisps of curls around the face, so I had to do something with that.

So here she is after. TI only left this in straws for a few hours while we had a visitor and I went out, so I don’t know how well it will stay in. I don’t really like the product in the hair that IT use so I try to get most of it out if I can. Still, I like the curls better with the face shape.

So as I said, no paint yet. I would like to darken her lips, I think, and do something with her eyeshadow, but I need to figure this out first.

Onto her outfit.

I am quite happy with how this turned out, especially since I actually maimed myself in the making of it. The tights are spare Stormer fishnets, because  I am really bad at making tights, and the shoes are Jetta’s which she’s borrowed for the image – I intend to get her some of her own, but wanted to see whether I needed yellow, gold or black and I’m still undecided. The dress and the skirt I made and all are stitched by hand. I really fell in love with the fabric for the dress – it’s black with tiny flowers and butterflies on in gold, and it was just perfect. I did use a pattern for the dress, though I adapted it to suit what I wanted, and the skirt I made from scratch, sketching a pattern from Stormer’s skirt to get the right dimensions and then stitching it accordingly. As I said in my last post, I don’t use a machine, I can only sew by hand, so it took some tme. The lace is from China, and I think it’s really pretty.

As for maiming myself – I still have a bruise on my foot from where I somehow managed to tread on my sewing needle. It was quite bloody. The things I do for my dolls…

So at long last, Sophie Devereux, French fraudster and Stinger drummer, has joined the ranks. Pictures of her with the other Stingers to come when I figure out what to do about her drums…