Part 2 The Making of a 10 Inch Grubby Rag Cloth Doll

Howdy! to everyone, I am back with the second half of making this 10 inch cloth doll.

In the the picture above you can see more how well the staining set in after I blew dried it the second time around. Now I am adding the hair and how you want to do this is cut a about a 3 inch wide piece of cardboard and wrap the yarn around about 6-8 times depending on how thick you want the hair to be, don't wrap tightly, you want the yarn somewhat loose so that you can pull it off the carboard. Once you have taken it off the cardboard cut a small piece of yarn and tie, knot the yarn in the center of you looped yarn. Next cut open the loops or just leave if you want the hair to have loops; In this doll I cut the loops open to give the doll more of a shaggy look.

Use heavy quilting thread to attach the yarn (hair) to the head of the doll. I usually knot my thread and begin on on side the head, working to the other side. I start the needle and thread first into the head then bring the needle and thread through my knot in the yarn and pull tight enough so that the yarn is firmly on the head of the doll and continue working through. I may just do a blog on sewing yarn or hair to doll and show more clearly on my technique of how I do it. I am looking at this seeing I don't have pictures showing what is going on.

Once you have sewn the hair (yarn) on then paint the facial features on with acrylic paints. I took a very small paint brush (for very fine detail) for the nose, eyes and cheeks. The cheeks are done by dry brushing the acrylic paint on, then I dipped a tooth pick in red to add some tiny freckles to her face.

In this photo which would not fall into order; I have sewn the two small squares together,making the pantaloons and now I am adding and gathering them on the doll. I will have to also blog a more detailed blog on how I make pantaloons. But I think you will have an idea of what I am doing here. (hope this made sense)

(This part should have been before gathering the pantaloons, but my blog but for some reason it would not let the me put the photos in the correct order.)You now want to cut a 12 inch long and 6 inch wide strip of Homespun fabric, cut on the fold; cut two 8 inch long and 4 inch wide strips of Homespun fabric on the fold. The 12 inch strip will be the dress and the 8 inches pieces will be the pantaloons. In the photo I have been rubbing in the cinnamon into each of the pieces. In the picture below I have gather the strip of fabric and placed over the top of the doll and cut two slits to slide the arms of the doll through. You can see the end result in the very top photo, I ended up cutting one more small strip of fabric and adding it to the hair as a little tie up and gave her more personality. This is a fun doll that one can come up with many different ways to create her, this is only one example that I have done. Later on I will have a blog on an easy way to make pantaloons and how I make the hair for my dolls, I have enjoyed sharing this and I hope you all have fun reading and getting creative with me.