Recently, I signed up for an art doll swap on ARTdecos. I sort of painted myself into a corner on this one—I wrote the rules for the swap to exclude any flat or paper dolls, specifying 3D dolls only. Once I did that, I really wanted to do some sort of fabric doll, but without convenient access to my sewing machine, I couldn’t really do much of a sewn structure. Rather than try to sew everything by hand, I decided to see what I could come up with using minimal stitching. These three dolls were the result.

To make your own version of this type of doll, you’ll need:

A bamboo skewer

Polyester fiberfill or batting

Thread

A piece of cool fabric – a quarter yard will be more than enough

Embroidery floss or fibers

A face charm or face mold and clay

Gold Lumiere

Beads, wire and embellishments as desired

Cut your skewer to the desired length. I cut mine about six inches long, and ended up with a nine inch tall doll. I usually use wire cutters to cut skewers, since they’re what’s at hand in my work table.

Cover the skewer with a handful of fiberfill. I just had loose fiberfill here, but in retrospect, if I’d used a strip of flat batting, this part might have gone smoother. Wrap the batting around the skewer, and then wrap thread around the batting to hold it in place. I wrapped mine looser at the top, and tighter at the bottom to create a sort of cone shape. If you added extra batting at the top and midway down, you could probably create a torso shape. Experiment and find a shape that’s pleasing.

Cut (or tear, which is my choice) a strip of fabric roughly 2-1/2 inches wide x the size of the fabric. Mine was 42 inches wide, so I had a nice long strip to work with. You can work with scraps if necessary—either fold the ends under to hide them, or learn to love raw, ragged edges. You can also use several strips of different fabrics if you like.

Fold one end of your fabric strip around the bottom of your doll as shown. Start winding the strip up the doll, tucking the bottom edge under if you don’t love the raw, ragged look.

Keep winding, all the way up to the top of the doll. When you get to the top, fold the ends around and start winding in the other direction. This will give you two layers of wrapped fabric, which will keep any batting from peeking out.

The finished doll body looks something like this. Now would be a great time to wrap some narrow strips of contrasting fabrics, or just lay some torn strips on the body randomly. The next step will hold everything in place.

Wrap the body in floss or fibers. I started at the center of the body, and wrapped up to the top, back down to the bottom, and then up to the center again with gold metallic floss. I just tied a knot to finish it off, and left the tails hanging long.

Three doll bodies, ready to be decorated. They looked sort of like velvet cocoons at this stage.

I cast three faces using push molds and Creative Paperclay. Any faces you want to use are fine—charms, an image stamped on wood, or whatever you have handy.

I painted all my faces with gold Lumiere, then added details with chalks and markers.

I glued the faces to the bodies using E6000, and let them dry completely before decorating.

I decorated each doll differently. This first one was my prototype. I wasn’t really fond of this face mold, since it’s so realistic. I ended up tying bunches of chenille to her head, and then wrapping it around to create a sort of waterfall of hair. Then I wrapped her head with teal ribbon and made a big bow on one side. Not very interesting.

This doll went to Johanna in Finland. I wanted to make her a little nature fairy, so I chose a wise old face, and surrounded it with silk leaves. I glued some pieces from a bag of natural potpourri around the leaves, and brushed everything with a little gold glitter glue. I wrapped a cinnamon stick to her body with gold floss, and then tied some seed beads into the tails.

This doll was for Lynn in San Diego. I wanted to do a sun goddess, so I sewed loops of gold seed beads around her face. I stabbed gold wire through the fabric, coiled it, and strung beads and charms on it, wrapping the pieces randomly around the doll’s body.