New Dolls and Wee Wonderfuls Pattern Review

I had such a blast making my new Wee Wonderfuls pattern, Kit, Chloe, and Louise!

I made two dolls, one as a gift for my little niece and one to keep at home for my own kid. (If you can't guess which is which I'll tell you - my kid picked out the blue hair!)

I made both dolls from a nice firm cotton broadcloth in a light skin tone. When I went to Treadle to pick this up there was a broad array of skin tones to choose from, dark brown all the way to light beige. Although this fabric wasn't specifically for dollmaking I liked all the human-colored options!

The first time around, I sewed a side body panel upside down. After that I found it helpful to mark the top of each piece with a small T.

The first doll I sewed had sort of squarish corners to her face (left). On the second doll (right) I tried to make the face rounder.

Instead of following the seam's shape exactly I rounded off the sharp corners. This meant that I was sewing at about 3/8" instead of 1/4" around the corners. You can sort of see this below. I think it made a difference!

I managed to avoid a gap at the top and bottom of the body by sewing each stitch line 1/4" shy of the edge, then having the next stitch line just meet the previous one.

When the body was together, I trimmed all the seam allowances with a pinking shear (to avoid having to cut tiny notches). I clipped into the seam at the neck.

I was not happy with the splayed legs on the first doll (left).

I used a ladder stitch to draw the front of the leg up a bit and straighten out the angle.

This made a weird fold in the leg but whatever.

After (left)! For the second doll (right) I overlapped the leg centers about 1/2" and also eased the top of the leg into the body. This also helped to straighten out the legs. If I make this again, I will shape the top of the leg pieces to create this same effect with less fuss.

Played a bit with the angle I sewed the arms on each doll.

The eyes were a bit too wide-set for my taste so I drew them in a little closer together.

I used a satin stitch for the eyes. I first outlined the eye with stem stitch, then filled it in with sort of random straight stitches. This helps pad out the satin stitch and also serves as a backup layer if the outer stitches get damaged. (I also decided later, after finishing, to add pupils.)

I saw this method here on Pinterest for making looped bangs. I sewed one side and made the loops around pins as I went, then sewed across the loops on the bottom too.

The finished bangs!

I sewed the front hair to just cover the edge of the bangs. 

I gathered the hair from the center part into pigtails and tied them up with yarn and embroidery floss, then trimmed evenly. As the directions suggested, I spent a lot of time putting tacking stitches throughout the hair. This is a great tip - DON'T SKIP! It adds so much to the feeling of the doll and keeps everything so tidy and secure!

Here she is, hair done!

Moving on to the second doll! I was a little doubtful at first that the bun hairstyle was going to work. Because of the head shape, the ends weren't all the same length. But I fiddled and played with it for a while and came up with a pretty cute shape!

Buns tied, but before tacking the hair everywhere.

After tacking.

Second dolly is done!

These were definitely more complicated patterns than I used from the Wee Wonderfuls book. The four-piece head was trickier to sew, and hard to make the front seams smooth and invisible. But I really loved the effect.

I tweaked several aspects of the pattern but the bottom line is Wee Wonderfuls patterns are amazing and I will always love using them. This was 12 bucks well spent!

Again, pattern is available here.

Clothes and accessories are in my next post here!