My fourth step is making the body.
As I stated in PART 1 the doll's head was going to be a bit top heavy so I had to make adjustments to her body design. I made her neck and shoulders wider and legs longer to help compensate for the bulk of the head.
Luckily felt and stuffing are very lightweight so it wasn't too hard to figure out the right body ratios
This isn't the type of child's doll that can be undressed and that made making the body so much easier. The torso and arms are the dress color
The torso is sewn together and stuffed, then the legs are sewn together and stuffed and sewn onto the bottom of the torso. Somehow I either lost of didn't take photos of this process, darn it!
My fifth step is making the clothes and other details.
I drew out the shape of the skirt once I had the legs attached and knew the length of the doll.
The character has a underskirt that peeks through in the front of the skirt.
This was great cause it allowed me at do a double skirt, darker yellow on the outside and light butter yellow on the inside giving the doll more stability.
After the skirt was made and sewn securely to the torso I made the doll's shoes and sewed them to the feet.
One of the last things I do on a doll is add the arms.I triple sewed them through the body they way you do for a button joint without any buttons since this child is so young.and the arms can be raised a lowered.
To finish her off I made her cape that attaches in the front and is not removable. Because felt can stretch out of shape if pulled and I didn't want to add more bulk by lining the cape the way I did the skirt, I did the extra step of blanket stitching all the way around the cape to help keep it's shape.
There was one very last detail to the doll that I had to do at the very end after I finished the cape. Miss Nettle is a Fairy and has wings.
I designed a set of wings, cut them out of double pieces of felt, blanket stitched them together to give them some weight and allow them to curve giving a more wing like appearance.
The doll's wings were triple sewn onto her torso and then I made slits in her cape and then hand button hole stitched around the holes so the wings came through the cape and the holes wouldn't get distorted over time. Whew!
The final step is photographing the doll.
If I were putting this doll in my shop I'd do a whole photo shoot for it but since it was a custom and the client saw work in progress pics along the way I just shot these in my kitchen, lol.
Introducing my version of Miss Nettle. I sent my client a video of the doll and all of her features and she loved it!
My mom was kind enough to hold the doll, yep in our kitchen, so I could get full shots of her all the way around. She's a good carrying around and snuggling type of doll. Her final size was 18 inches tall and off she went to her new home.
My client told me her son knew who the doll was right away, carried her around and slept with her that first night he received her! That made me so happy. There is nothing greater than making a child happy!
I hope you enjoyed this project in my Maker Series! More of these projects can be found if you use the search bar and type sassy packrat studios maker series.
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