I made a doll ! Her name is Charlotte.

Isn’t she cute ? She’s the Itty Bitty Felt Doll Starter Set Girl from E and Me Designs, part of the set I bought on steep discount just before I won that $50. gift certificate there. With the certificate, I bought several felt doll options (MLP wigs and clothes), and I’m truly glad now, because “Charlotte” was lots of fun to make, and I want to make more ! Truth be told, she was kind of a test to see if I Iiked making (or at least having) felt paper dolls before shelling out much bigger bucks for the Elsa and Anna sets offered over here. Now I’m hoping the clothes can be swapped back and forth, because this cutie is fun !  And she came with several outfits…

The dark brown ‘thread’ leading from her hair to her shoulder is an accident. I was ‘dyeing’ some threads on the back and the beige felt sandwiched between the front and back brown felt ‘hair’ with an industrial-strength marker, and it bled through to the front. It’s lucky, ‘cause I like how it looks. 

There’s quite a few more options for clothes and costumes, but nowhere near as much and as detailed as what’s out there for the 5x7-inch embroidery hoop. I’ve never really been jealous about not having a bigger embroidery field until these dolls. Oh, well. I’m glad to have what I do, and if there were more, there’d just be more I’d want to buy. I may try to make regular ole three-dimensional doll clothes, like from tulle and denim, with actual backs, just for kicks. 

This is the inexpensive by-the-yard or sheet felt from Hancock Fabrics, and she still looks good. And you definitely want tear-away interfacing for these. Cut-away will leave white tracings that’ll be darn near impossible to eliminate. Heck, some of the tear-away was hard to remove in several of these tight angle corners.

Then, I made some simple dresses, included with the set. The printer messed up, so I had duplicate copies of the design worksheet, always useful. I cut out the misprint and figured I could fit two gowns in a single hooping, and with a bit of skill that I have more confidence in, stitched out some die-lines on the tear-away stabilizer. Yup ! And I could even make them reversible, just for kicks. A quick dig through the felt scrap box (which I still love !) netted me four pieces I could use. Cut a template out of one of the hypodermic boxes, used Dollar Tree Disney Princess stickers to cover up the syringe print. Nice to have a bit of color in my Stitch Out book. I take notes on the worksheets (how long it took to stitch, what colors I used, which stabilizers, etc.), and when I’m done with sewing it, the worksheet gets filed in the Stitch Out book. Comes in handy when I want to re-use a design years later !