embroidery

This doll is a gift for a friend, completed and given, so I can now post about making her.

I started with some lovely hand-dyed wool felt, a beautiful color and heavy. I haven’t made a doll form before, but I know that my recipient likes green, so thought I’d jump in with this beautiful felt. I made a pattern with paper, and tried to make a trial form with some heavyweight cotton twill.

This doesn’t bode well, I can’t turn the twill right side out. The neck has gone missing somewhere, and the arm is stuck, like a truculent child’s sleeve.

All right, try sewing the seam by hand so that I don’t have to turn it, sort of slip stitch the seam from the outside.

I can’t get that to work smoothly either, and now it looks like a friendly ghost waving?

So that leaves the stitching on the outside, and just not needing to turn it!

For a face, I’m using a beautiful cab by Donna Cason. I’m so pleased I had this on hand, the colors are perfect! The body is filled with more pieces of felt, cut in the same shape as the body, but smaller — one layer for the arms and legs area, and two layers for the face and torso.

And here is the starting bead collection:

The beads are Czech, Italian, French, and Japanese, small Swarovski, and some vintage nailheads.