Some people use washers from the hardware store to weight puppets. When I say washer I mean the type your use with nuts and bolts not the type you wash your cloths in.   I was not sure how that would translate to German so thought I should explain. The rocks you spoke about may work but if the edges are not smooth they could wear through the cloth.  If you do use them maybe you could hot glue felt around them to soften the edges. The hot glue would also add some weight.

Yes, I love what Mrs. Pritzel did, shame she didn't do it for a very long time. I don't mind laces (bit of a cloth fan myself (ever seen "boxing Helena"? When the character played by Julian Sands spies through the window? I love the way they handled the curtains there. Very aethetic!) but the dolls are empty. You got more personality from a vase, if you want china!
@Shawn, might be you mean "Unterlagscheibe"? I grow more and more dependent of this site:
http://dict.leo.org/ende?lang=de&lp=ende
I think it's better than google and even though it is German, you might find your way around.

Yes that looks like the right word Rikka.   I plugged it into Google images and it came up with what I was talking about.

Glad to be of help!

Unterlgscheiben! yay! I wouldnt have thought of that, my mind was going more in the spherical-object-direction.
I definitely love fabrics myself but i think some doll makers just need a "skeleton" to add all sorts of fancy scraps to so they can display them in the living room. Having said that, i dont mean to be disrespectful to any kind of taste or preference but I definitely like dolls with character better. And those are not always "beautiful" in the classical sense...Tim Burton's creations would be one example. Oh when I am done with school it would be a dream to work on such beautiful objects...

Again , thanks for the advice and I will be off to find boxing Helena now

That movie got "Enigma" music in it and the Enigma clips might also be an inspiration, but it is hard to watch them on YouTube from Germany (GEMA you know).
Sometimes the use of a doll as a skeletton (or a marionette as an hanging object, not a puppet) does have artistic merits. I was not able to find a link for pictures of the swiss marionett artist Claudia Zuffrey- Mayer who makes her figures by this concept. Annette Hellmich I did find (http://www.young-classics.com/EN/index.php?navi=1&site=biographies&page=hellmich), the page is German but... sorry, I couldn't find something more international. Mrs. Hellmich once did an assemblage curtain that was almost only cloth, except for the heads of child and mother ("Geburt der kleinen Elfe" I'd translate that to "Birth of the little elf"). You might consider her work a bit "kitschig" (I think chintzy could be a translation), but I still think it was a neat idea.