https://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/little-doll-2 • Posted by Little L.
This is a doll I made aaages ago and found this morning, I'm gonna attempt to replicate it as well as I can so you can make one too! Little L x p.s. again, sorry for crappy quality/lighting in the pictures... makes everything more yellowy than it actually is :L p.p.s. I know some of the explanation is a bit confusing, please comment if you have any questions :)
This is a doll I made aaages ago and found this morning, I'm gonna attempt to replicate it as well as I can so you can make one too! Little L x p.s. again, sorry for crappy quality/lighting in the pictures... makes everything more yellowy than it actually is :L p.p.s. I know some of the explanation is a bit confusing, please comment if you have any questions :)
Cut a piece of your "skin" felt, 14x9.5 cm.
take the left hand side and fold it into the rest of the fabric so it looks like this.
Then take the right hand side and fold it over, so you can still see a teeny bit of the previous fold.
Use your scissors to cut a hole in the middle and at the top, through all three layers of fabric. The hole should be a little smaller than your pencil. Once you have the hole, unfold the top fold and put a line of glue along the top of the bottom fold (not the back layer) at the height of the hole. Stick the top two layers together, making sure the hole is lined up on both pieces. (sorry for the crappy explanation, I hope you understood)
Stick your pencil into the hole so that the point is outside the body. You want the two stuck together bits of felt to fold away from you, and the back to fold towards you over the top of them (if that makes sense). Glue the top fold to the top of the two joined pieces.
Glue together the top flap and the middle flap, along the seam shown.
Stick together the flappy bit to the middle bit of fabric at the left hand side, with a bit of the middle bit still showing. Then glue a thin line along the bottom to stick together the top and middle pieces. You should be left with a pocket-type thing.
Stuff your "body". Make sure you do it when the pencil is still through the top hole. Use a different pencil to poke the stuffing around so you dont get any flat bits. Using smaller bits of stuffing is easier than bigger bits. Stuff the body however full you want it, but not too thin otherwise you will be able to feel the pencil.
Make sure you don't fill it the whole way to the top. Leave about this much space.
Glue the bottom together like you glued the top.
Put your "body" to one side. Now we will start on the head. If your wooden bead is the same colour as your "skin" felt, skip to step 15. If not, you need to cut out some shapes like the ones in the picture to cover your bead. It took me a while to find a shape that could completely cover it. The farthest left is slightly shorter and wider, for the face. You want to have multiple pieces so that you can stick them on without wrinkles.
Use some Blu-tack or similar to test out whether the shapes totally cover your bead.
Use your hot glue gun to stick the shapes onto your bead. Make sure to be extra neat around the face. On this picture you can see one side is slightly unstuck. Just glue under the edge with a thin line of glue so it doesn't splodge out when you push it down.
Here is your finished head :)
Now we are going to do the hair. Take the wool you want for the hair and wrap it around the fullest part of your fingers, holding it steady with your thumb. The more you wrap it round, the thicker you hair will be. However we will add some more hair later to the front and back, so dont go OTT, but I think I could have used a bit more.
Take the wool off your hand, pinching it together where it was wrapped around the bottom of your hand (by your pinky). Be sure to cut off the wool at the same point your other end is.
Take another piece of the same colour wool and tie around where you were pinching the wool together.
Cut through all the wool at the same place the two ends are, at the opposite end to you are pinching. If there are any pieces much longer, cut them to size, but some variation is fine :)
Take one of the pieces you used to tie the hair together. Then dot a blob of hot glue on the knot. Pull the threaded wool through your bead so that the hair sticks on properly. If your wool pokes through the bottom, stick it to the inside of the bead and cut it down.
Wrap some more wool around your hand, like before, only this time cut both ends of the loop through. your strands should be approx.the same length as the rest of the hair. Put some hot glue on the back of the head and individualy stick the strands onto the head.
Cut a small strip of "skin" felt, the length you want the neck to be. Hot glue around the top of the round bit of the pencil, NOT ON THE POINT. Stick your neck fabric around this, making sure the seam is at the back. Now put a thin line af glue all around the bottom of the neck to stick the neck to the body. Gently push the pencil down into the body. Then hot glue all around the point of the pencil and stick the head on (with the hair at the top, obviously). (Sorry about the lack of picures, i forgot to photograph this stage. The picture is side view)
Cut another piece of "skin" felt, 7.5x5 cm. This will become an arm :). Fold the left hand side into the rest of the fabric and fold over the right hand side, like you did with the body.
Press down the folds so that when you unfold it you can see the creases.
Put a thin line of glue at the very top of the middle section. Fold the left section over the middle to stick it down. Then do the same for the other side, put a line of glue on the back of the left section (the bit now facing up), and fold over the right hand section to stick it down.
We are goig to glue together the outside crease between the left and middle sections and the outside edge of the right hand pice. You will need to do this insections or it will get very sticky and could go wrong. It should look like this when finished, with no opening on the left hand side.
Stuff your arm, again using a pencil. You dont want to make it too firm or it wont be able to bend. Glue shut the bottom end like we did with the top. Once the glue is dry, if you have any fuzzy stringy bits or blobs of glur sticking out you can easily cut these off with your scissors.
Stick the top ofthe arm to the bottom of the flappy bi, like this. Make sure the seam on the arm is at the back.
Then put a small blob of glue in the armpit of the doll, and tame those flailing arms :) (not too much though, you don't want a rigid dolly)
Repeat steps 23-29 for the other arm.
Cut two more pieces of fabric, 10x5cm (for the legs). Do exactly the same with these pieces as you did for the arms (repeat steps 23-29, only with a different size) You may want to stuff these a bit fatter than the arms, and not fold all the way to make them a bit wider, but it works either way :) (sorry for the lack of pictureee)
We are going to stick the legs onto the flappy bits at the bottom of the body.
Stick the outside of the leg onto the inside of the flap, making sure again that the seam is at the back. Do this for both sides. Ta-da! Your dolly :) But theres something missing...
I made these eyes by cutting out teeny circles of felt and sticking my black glass beads onto them. On my first doll i missed out the felt to give a more minimalistic look. It works either way, but the felt makes it more fiddly. Whenever you stick anything onto the bead, always put glue onto the bead and not on what you are sticking on.
I thought my doll looked a bit baldy at the front so i measured out two more pieces of wool and stuck them on at the front, giving her a slight side parting. (You don't have to do this if you added enough hair the first time)
Ta-daa! ready to dress up :D Use your imagination with the clothes, it's a great way to use up and scrap fabric you have.. I might make a tutorial to make some clothes and a bonnet later :)