It’s funny to look back on how things came about isn’t it? I really love pop culture and have been working on a doll design that I could replicate the general look and feel, but change up enough to make any particular person I wanted – and I think I have done it! But first let’s take a trip down memory lane…
There are the first few dolls I made, based on the Gingermelon Best Friends pattern, Mimi Kirchner free felt doll pattern on Purl Bee, pattern and the Black Apple free rag doll pattern on Matha Stewart.
It was exciting times, with my hands busy sewing and my Pinterest account getting alarmingly high with inspiration pins. I did experiments in how long it takes to hand sew a doll and tried a lot of Gingermelon and Noialand designs. From there I kind of combined the two styles of smaller felt dolls and the larger ragdoll pattern which became my next doll incarnation – a David Bowie Doll. His minimal design meant it was for someone to identify the character but without too much detail.
Given my limited sewing skills/impatience I wanted to keep using felt, but looked at making the doll a little longer, more human shaped. You can see below the different head styles and calculations I was doing to get the right look and feel.
The one you can see in the middle is pretty much the prototype I went with but added some seam allowance so I could sew it with the sewing machine – hand sewing was way too much bustamychops for me! And this is the final outcome –
TADA!!!!
How have you gone with creating your own unique design?
