The Beauty of 100% Pure Wool Felt

A good doll should be sturdy but cuddly, in addition, to being pretty or cute, of course.  But pretty and cute wears thin if the doll can’t withstand the test of love and time. That is why I sew my dolls from 100% wool felt.

Although a lot of people are sewing children’s toys, ornaments and wearable art with felt, the most are sewn with a felt blend—a blend of felt and rayon. Felts with 20 to 35 percent wool are perfect for these projects and easy to find in a wide variety of colors. A number of sellers on Etsy offer and the Internet offer wool felt blends.  Wool Felt Central is a great place to start.

However, for the dolls I cannot use the blend. Wool felt blends stretch more easily and the doll would not hold its shape while stuffing. I tend to stuff most of their body parts tightly and the blend could start to pull and rip at the seams. After being packed with wool stuffing, the doll’s body and limbs are closed with ladder stitch which involves a lot of yanking with sturdy upholstery thread. I am not sure the blend would hold up to the pulling and yanking and sometimes, redoing, and more pulling and yanking.

Felt on the Fly's swatch cards.

Which brings me to another important quality of 100% wool felt.  It is forgiving. I can sew on a set of eyes and after a day of living with a doll’s face realize the eyes are not quite right.  The stitching for the eyes can be undone, the eyes moved, the small holes fill in and the new face beams.

Pure wool felt will not pill. As it ages it does get a soft even downy halo, and for me this seems a bit like children’s skin.

For cleaning, I recommend periodically running a lint roller over your doll. If she gets a spill on her then the dry cleaner, Woolite or a Tide Pen will work..

Felt comes in different weights, the most common being 1mm thick and 3mm thick.  The 3mm is too thick for sewing dolls.

Pure wool felt is not inexpensive. It averages $60 a yard, but I think worth it. You just need layout thoughtfullyand cut carefully.

I have some wonderful sources for pure wool felt.

Purl Soho offers Woolfilz Felt from Holland in large squares, yardage and color coordinated bundles.

A Childs’s Dream also offers a similar pure wool felt from Holland.

Weir Crafts offers both 1mm and 3mm as well as felt blends.

On Etsy I have been buying felt from:

Felt on the Fly

My Button Obsession

I have a small obsession...buttons. Small buttons. The more the better. I started collecting small buttons before eBay and Etsy were around to offer "lots" of small buttons. And as eBay and Etsy came into existence, my obsession was just further enabled. 

What exactly is it about buttons? I like just the right amount of realistic detail on my dolls' clothes. Too much is "twee", too little is "blah". The right buttons on a doll cardigan or shoes makes it feel finished. Or if it doesn't, there is still the possibility of playing with the  color of thread used to sew the button on. Perle cotton of course.  

But buttons can turn a plain grey cardigan into classic vintage, or classic modern, or girly, or rustic. If you don't like the look, you only need to change that last step, the buttons.

Part of my button collection.

Shooting for Etsy

When you've been creating something, imagining it, designing it, physically making it, in order to sell it,  you need to convey all of what you've done with photographs. And if you are selling on Etsy, you are limited to only five.

When you try to photograph a handmade doll, just as it is in the creation of the doll,  there are many decisions to be made. The clothing, the pose, the background, the lighting, the position of the camera, the angle, the f-stop, the shutter speed... 

For now I've made one decision. I like the grey cotton backdrop, at least for this one doll. 

Making Babies

After designing Phoebe, the big sister doll, it was not long before she felt lonely without a baby sister. I set out to design a baby doll. I thought we'd have a baby in no time. Babies are smaller, simpler and the 1950s produced many baby doll patterns with a three dimensional head. 

Baby Sasha doll

Two months and many iterations later, I had learned that capturing the essence of a baby in a hand made jointed baby doll was more difficult than designing an upright post-toddler girl. I used the Sasha baby dolls as a model. Their arms and legs have a curve to them that beams baby.

The baby's face and hair were the next challenge. I've noticed that the best baby faces are simple and understated. My first baby had large eyes. Babies' eyes are relatively large, but on a doll that looks martian like. My latest crop of babies have small eyes. 

Egg's hair is a bit amplified. Babies don't have a lot of hair, but most girls like their dolls to have hair. 

Egg now.