Dollmaking from mother to daughter

  Not surprisingly, since she's so often seeing me do it, Puni had been after me for a while to teach her to knit, crochet, sew...basically she wanted to do something with a needle. It started when I was making Taffy, and I gave her a discarded lemon-shaped head to play with. She drew its features with pigma pens (if I had know we'd keep it, I'd have coated the head with Createx first to keep the colors from bleeding). Another lemonhead served as its torso, and then as she clamored for the doll to be finished, I sewed basic leg and arm shapes and gave her some polyfill to stuff them. I attached the arms and legs using elastic thread so they can move up and down.

She made most of the dress herself. She's not six years old yet so I thought we'd start with felt, meaning no hems and no need for a very sharp needle. I told her many times to be very careful with the needle, to move the needle away from herself when pulling thread, and I haven't allowed her to work on the dress when I wasn't near her.

If you want to adapt this dress to your child's doll, it's very easy to do even if you have minimal sewing skills, use a paper towel, drape it on the doll, mark the top, side and bottom edges, remove the towel, draw the shapes and just add a seam allowance on the sides.

I didn't think Puni would be up to learning applique yet, so we used buttons to secure the felt decorations on the dress. Her stitches are still quite wild, but she's been very intent and concentrated, spent a long time stitching in a single sitting, and I'm quite impressed with the result! So without further ado please meet Belle Rose.

Here's how I made her hair. I measured the length from the top of her forehead to the base of her nape : 7 cm. Then I measured the length from the top of her head to her feet : 25 cm. I used a 30 cm high piece of cardboard (anything around 25 cm high would have done) and wound yellow cotton yarn around it a dozen times , cut the loops at the top, and repeated the process until I had lined up the hair on my table up to a height of 14 cm (7 cm x 2).

I have saved a couple of such cardboard pieces  from Amazon boxes and find them handy to make hair loops. Then when all the hair was lined up, I secured it with adhesive tape on both sides of the center,  marked the center line with vanishing pen, then taped the hair to a piece of tissue paper, and sewed the center line on the sewing machine using yellow thread.

Then I removed the tissue paper and tape, folded the hair in 2 horizontally so that its thickness would be doubled, and pinned it on the head.

To sew the hair on the head I used a long needle, insterted the needle in the back of the head, and came up at the center top of the forehead just where the hair begins, leaving a yarn tail in the back. From here hubby is taking the photos so they are out of focus!

Then I sewed the hair along the center part using back stitch, starting and ending with an additional back stitch in order to secure the yarn.

Finally, I pulled both yarn ends and cut them close to the fabric, then rubbed the holes left by the needle with its blunt end in order to make them disappear. All that remains is to braid the hair and trim the ends.

Puni is very happy with her doll, and hopefully when she grows up she'll at least know how to sew buttons. 

 

Comments

[Merry]

What a beautiful little doll! Super cute! The dress is lovely--great job, Puni! ^_^

[Barbara]

I love the smiling face! Great work.

[Thimbleanna]

What a cute doll -- very cool job on the hair. And Puni did a great job!

[Debby]

What a fun time working on the doll. And thanks for all the great pictures.

[kristin]

Puni certainly got your creative gene. thanks for all the great sewing tips here...really useful information.

[Bettsi]

What a great looking dolly! Puni did a terrific job!

[Jullie]

Great tutorial!! Exactly what I need for my doll!! :) Thanks for sharing