turn your embroidery into a little doll

I have created a very simple tutorial for turning your embroidery for a little doll.

The tutorial is for feeling witchy so you will need the pdf pattern for ‘feeling witchy’ available here

My first witch doll was the same size as the pattern but it was very fiddly to sew and her legs really didn’t want to be turned out but with some delicate perseverance it all worked out. I made the second doll larger by photocopying her at 110%. Basically if you don’t mind fiddly sewing then you can keep her at the orginal size but otherwise I would recommend photocopying her larger. You can go larger than 110%, the larger the doll, the easier she is to turn out.

These instructions are for a doll enlarged to 110%. Once you have traced her onto your fabric (I used Robert Kaufman essex linen in natural) you will need to embroider her.

I used c3799, 310 and 3799 to stitch her but you could just stitch her in black or black and grey with no sparkle.

For her dress I drew the spiders web on first and then drew straight lines (using a ruler) about 1/2cm apart and then stitched them in running stitch using c3799.

To draw the spiders web first draw a cross 1.5cm both ways.

next add two diagonal lines

Mark points about 1mm from the end of each one then you are going to join the points with a slightly curved line

You want 3 or 4 of these rows according to what you can fit in

I then stitched the web using 1 strand of c3799.

Now take your frixion pen and draw a line around her about 1cm wide. This will be your cutting line. If you are making a larger doll you might want to draw your line further out.

Once you have cut her out you need to think about backing materials. You could use a print fabric like this liberty tana lawn or you could use a black linen but I chose to use the same natural linen to back her.

Now you need to draw a second line around her about 1/2 cm from the embroidery. This will be your stitching line.

Place the embroidered piece face down on the plain backing piece, right sides together (they should match). Stitch around her using a small back stitch. Leave a gap in her side to turn her out.

Make sure you secure the ends around the gap to stop it coming undone when you move on to turning and stuffing her. Once you’ve stitched around her you might want to trim the fabric closer to the stitch line just make sure you don’t accidentally clip your stitching.

Now it’s time to turn her out. You will need patience here! I used some small blunt scissors to help turn her legs out but you need to be very careful not to push them through the fabric or seam. It’s a lot of wriggling of fabric.

At this point you might feel like celebrating and do feel free! When you come back it’s time to stuff her. You want a firm doll so you will need to draw on that patience again as you stuff her with tiny amounts of stuffing, pushing it right down to her toes bit by bit. Again I used blunt scissors but don’t push so hard that you go through the fabric.

The trick is to make sure that each bit of stuffing is exactly how you want it before moving on to the next piece. This may take longer than you might expect but it will leave you with an evenly stuffed doll.

Once you are happy with the stuffing all that is left is to stitch up her side using a tiny slip stitch folding the edges inside.

And your doll is finished!

You could use this method for other embroidered figures. I have made a mermaid, and a mother nature. It would be great for the lavender girl pattern.

I hope you enjoy stitching from this tutorial and if anything is unclear do ask in the comments below and I will try to clarify.

Happy stitching

Kate