Lately I have wanted to do more work with colored pencils on fabric. A couple of weeks ago I posted my blog on the Japanese Doll Festival and that sparked me to make a doll. So I combined the two urges and made a little pocket doll with colored pencils.
A pocket doll is simply a doll small enough to fit in a pocket. I decided to make my little doll based on a cookie cutter I received as a child. It had the design for the ‘cookie’ on the top of it and that is what my doll would look like. (You might notice it is a pretty thick cookie cutter. There was actually soap shaped like the cutter in it when I received it as a child.). The cutter is about 2 ½ inches wide and 4 ½ inches tall.
Supplies needed
-- white or cream or off white cotton fabric. You will want it at least 2 inches bigger than the dolls shape
--a piece of freezer paper the same size as the cut fabric. Freezer paper can be found in some groceries in the wax paper/aluminum foil aisle. This helps stabilize your fabric so it doesn’t stretch or move when coloring it. You can use a light weight iron on fabric stabilizer if you want. You will remove the freezer paper when you are done.
--colored pencils – any brand will work. The more expensive brands might have a darker pigment.
-- textile medium A textile medium is a liquid put on a painting that makes the painting permanent so if you wash it, the pigment will not come off or fade. Often times it was put on oil or acrylic paintings so they would not fade if exposed to sunlight. It is a little thicker than water and you brush it on the coloring and let it dry. This is more likely found in an art supply store or a craft store near the paint supplies or glues.
-- brushes to apply the textile medium and small container to hold a small amount of textile medium
-- backing fabric for the doll. It needs to be bigger than the doll design at least by 1/4 inch for a seam allowance.
-- fiber fill to stuff the doll
-- needle and thread. You can if you want to use your machine but something this small I usually do it by hand.
I started with white cotton fabric. I cut it to 4 by 6 inches for fit the cookie cutter design. I cut a piece of freezer paper the same size and ironed it shiny side down onto the back of the white fabric. As I mentioned above this stablizes the fabric so it doesn’t move around when I am coloring the fabric.
With this next part I wanted to try something different. I wanted the design to be free handed. I didn’t want the entire design to be trace from some other source. I just traced the shape around the cookie cutter. Since I didn’t want any tracing lines, I used a flesh tone pencil. Much of the outer edges were going to be arms and legs. Where the hair and dress would be, I was going to use a dark pencil so it would cover the flesh colored pencil marks.
Now the fun part – coloring. When I color I first go one direction with my pencil over the space I am coloring and then I go over that color, with the same pencil, in the opposite direction. So with the hair, I used brown going right and left and once that area was totally brown, I then went up and down. I think it gives it a more even coloring. You still see the pencil marks but not as prominently.
Once I am done coloring, I leave the freezer paper on the fabric and cover the entire piece with the textile medium. I start off with only a teaspoon of medium and if I need more I will add it as needed. Don’t worry that the medium is white coming out of the bottle, once it is spread on the fabric, it turns clear. Let it dry and then peel the freezer paper off. I should mention that the dried textie medium does make the fabric feel still but the advantage of the medium is the colored pencil will remain permanent on the fabric.
To make the doll, I usually measure about ¼ inch from the edge of the figure and cut away the excess. This ¼ inch area is your seam allowance. I am going to sew right along the edge of the colored line.
But when I went to sew on the wrong side, I had a hard time see the color on the back. So I taped it to my light box and trace in pencil the edge of the coloring. If you don’t have a light box, tape the doll to a brightly lit window, it works the same way.
Once you have the doll cut out, you now have to cut out the backing fabric. You could trace the cookie cutter again and color the back of the doll. I like with my little dolls to sometime have other fabric to back the doll. I have this set of woven fabrics that had just the purple I needed to match the dress.
I pinned the doll to the backing fabric (right sides together) and then cut around the doll.
What was left was to sew along the trace line. Make sure you leave a little opening to turn the doll right side out and clip the seams so all the curved seams are smooth (Don’t clip the sewing or the doll will come apart. Take it from someone who knows.). Stuff the little doll, sew up the opening and you have yourself a doll.
© 2021 – Cheryl Fillion
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