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Making and Sewing
Muslin Dolls
About Muslin /
Cloth Doll Bodies |
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An assortment of muslin doll
bodies. |
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There are a couple of ways one can make a fabric, cloth, or muslin doll.
The first and most time consuming would be to use a doll pattern or design
a pattern on your own. Then you must make clothes or design clothes
and accessories for your doll. |
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Doll Patterns can
be found by the thousands in stores and on the internet. |
Here is a doll pattern
with a raggedy doll. I changed the clothes, and face size. To make
my own design and doll. |
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pattern companies who sell fabric doll patterns of all sizes, shapes, and
colors. You could also buy or design a basic pattern and then change
the clothes, hair, face, and accessories around to make different
types of dolls. |
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Searching for a good doll pattern
company can be easy with today's magazines, books, and the internet.
The advantage of buying doll patterns is you can use them over and over
again, and you can redesign the pattern, doll size, clothes, hair, and
face yourself as I have in the right photo above. |
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When making dolls with doll patterns as shown above, it requires one to
buy muslin fabric for the doll body, pin the pattern to the fabric, cut
fabric, sewing the arms, legs, and body pieces pretty sides together, turn
and stuff the body parts, and then sew the arms and legs to the body.
All of this process is required to make a doll body.
Yet a simpler way
would be to buy the doll or muslin doll body form. This means the
doll body is already put together for you as shown in the photo below.
This particular
method of doll making certainly saves time, however, there is a limited
number of doll bodies in different shapes and sizes that can be purchased.
Usually a muslin doll like this can be found in 31", 18",11", 8", and 5."
Another method of
doll making is to sew the muslin body parts with the clothing parts
together to form a doll. This method was VERY popular back in the
1920-1950's. The photo below is a doll made from an original 1942
McCall's pattern. It was very difficult to make with about 15
pattern pieces and very un-clear instructions. In the 1940's just
about everyone sewed, so the pattern companies just assumed everyone knew
who to make things. The instructions were very vague.
These fabric dolls
were known as the "My Buddy" dolls. They came out during WWII and
were a big hit with the United States Army and Navy families. As you
can see, the muslin face, ears, and hands, are sewn right to the army
outfit. This doll body was not made and then "dressed", as you have
seen above, it was all sewn together, and then stuffed.
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One last type of
doll or muslin or cloth body I want to share with you, would be if you
purchased your doll body pre-made, but not pre-stuffed as shown in the
photo below.
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As you can see
in the photo, I purchased a doll body with the face already sewn in.
All I have to do is paint or tea-stain the body, arms, and legs,
paint the face, then stuff each part, and last sew the doll body
together. |
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Sewing and
Making Dolls Support and Aids |
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Sewing Muslin Dolls Info Page
Sewing Muslin Doll Photo Page 1 -
2
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NEW! Easy
to Sew VALENTINE Kits!
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Muslin
Fabric
