I Make Dolls

I am in the mood to make dolls and when I read a blog I posted a couple of years ago, I became even more inspired.  I thought I would repost this for you to read.

I make dolls.  I have made dolls for over 30 years.  But I never really considered myself a doll maker until recently.  I usually made dolls to do other crafts. 

Since I am a fiber artist, most of the dolls I make are cloth dolls.  Cloth or rag dolls (often called that because they were made and stuffed with rags) have been around for thousands of years.  The earliest one knon is about 1700 years old.  It was found in a grave from Ancient Rome and was made of linen.  There are not many cloth dolls around because they were literally loved to pieces,

My doll making actually started with teddy bears.  I found a wonderful pattern and began making bears for gifts and for charity.  I gave dozens to homeless and abused women shelters for the children staying there

I then found a pattern for little felt bears.  Felt was wonderful to use because it doesn’t fray.  The fun part of these bears was you could dress them in various outfits.  I made a lot of these as gifts creating outfits to fit the recipients’ personality.

 

I think my first doll was from a fabric panel.  Panels often have all the parts of a doll or animal printed on the fabric including the instructions. You just cut them out and sew them up.  What I liked about this doll was more the embroidery than the doll.  At the time the doll was just to show off the embroidery I did.

 Even though I had made a doll, I still didn’t consider myself a doll maker.  Then one Christmas break while visiting my mother in Wisconsin, she found a class at a local quilt shop that we could take.  Taking a class together was something we always wanted to do but usually by the time I would get to her house for the holidays, there weren’t any classes available. The class was to make an Angel doll.  Mom collected angels so this was perfect for her.

 

Then around 2000 I was reading a book on creativity and there was an exercise called the Creativity doll.  The idea was to create a doll that represented something you wanted in your life: love, marriage, increased income, etc.  Think of it as putting a wish into a 3 dimensional form.  I wanted to be more of a free spirit so I made the doll following a pattern but her outfit was designed as I went along.

 

 I then began reading up on dolls: creativity dolls, healing dolls, dolls children could make and began to make more and more dolls  I finally called myself a doll maker  But still my dolls represent different types of fiber techniques.

I have made a doll using colored pencil on fabric.  

 

I have made woven dolls.  This was actually a challenge from my Fiber Artist group.  We had to create something using the bead and the fiber I used as the hair.  The sequins were actually part of the yarn.

 I have done dolls in punchneedle embroidery.

And my latest was the embellished doll I did during my birthday creativity retreat last year.

Dolls remind me of my childhood and all the play involved with dolls.  I still feel I am playing when I make dolls.  But doll making also inspires my creativity and imagination. It’s a challenge to see what type of artistic technique I can use with a doll and that then leads me to use that technique elsewhere.

You don’t have to consider yourself a doll maker to create a doll.  I didn’t for a long time. But some time when you are stuck for what to create or you just want to play try making a doll.  And, hey guys, no one says you can’t make dolls.

©2018, 2021- Cheryl E. Fillion

 

Punchneedle Embroidery – other fabrics

I earlier wrote about the fabric best used for punchneedle embroidery: weaver’s cloth.  It is a woven poly-cotton blend fabric.  Being woven the needle slips between the threads of the cloth to form the punchneedle loop and since it is a poly-cotton blend when the fabric is taken out of the hoop, it closes in around the stitch loops and holds them in place.

 

Weaver’s cloth is the best fabric but it is not the only fabric that can be used.  Just about any fabric can be used for punch needle.  Cotton as well as a 100% polyester fabric has been used but since the needles are so sharp, they can tear the threads of the fabric. 

 

One of the other secrets about weaver’s cloth is that if you ever have to take out some loops you can easily iron (or rub with your finger nail) the holes where the stitches were and it will look like no stitches were ever there.   With cotton if you have to take out the stitch loops, you might have a hole that can’t be repaired.  And cotton or polyester fabric doesn’t have a stretch to it like a poly cotton blend, so when you take it out of the hoop it won’t close around the stitch loops and hold them in place.

 

But there is a way to fix that.  All you have to do is use a woven interfacing.  Iron it to the back of the fabric and it will help hold those stitches in place just like the weaver’s cloth does.  Remember the design in punch needle is drawn on the back of the fabric and you stitch from the back.  So when using woven interfacing draw the design on the interfacing and then iron it on to the fabric.  You could use other types of interfacing but like cotton or 100% polyester fabric, it will tear when the needle goes through it.

 

cotton back with woven interfacing

 

cotton front

 

Cotton and polyester are not the only fabric to use the woven interfacing with.  You can use it on knit or jersey if you want to punchneedle a design on a baby outfit or a t-shirt.

I even tried it on a velveteen fabric without using the interfacing.  It looked OK but I wouldn’t do it again. 

 

Velveteen back

 

 

Velveteen front

 

 

I read somewhere about other fabrics like tulle, denim, aida cloth (used for cross stitch) needle point canvas and even perforated paper.  I found it had good results. Perforated paper is a light weight cardstock with holes punched it in at regular intervals so you can add stitching to cards or scrapbooks. After you have punched a design, just cut the design out of the paper around the punching (leaving one hole of the paper past the design to hold the edge stitch loops in place) and then glue it to the cardstock.  The fact that it is glued to another paper will prevent the stitches from coming out.

 

aida back

 

 

aida front

 

needlepoint canvas back

 

needlepoint canvas front

 

 

perforated paper back

 

perforated paper front

 

The one thing about the fabrics I listed above is that you have to be aware of the size needle you use with it.  You wouldn’t want to use a 6 strand or large needle on tulle which is likely to tear the tulle and a small or 1 or 2 thread needle would have a hard time going through denim.

 

The best advice with using other fabrics for punchneedle is to try it.  Take some fabric, use it with or without woven interfacing and see if you like the results.  I would try it with what ever thread you use the most often (for me that would be embroidery floss).   Since you know how that thread looks on weavers cloth, it will give you a good comparison to how it would look on other fabrics, canvas or even perforated paper

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©2018, 2021  Cheryl Fillion

Punchneedle Embroidery – Technique

Punchneedle embroidery isn’t really that hard once you know the technique and remember a couple of rules.

Rule 1 is you work from the back of the design.  Most embroidery you are working on the front surface of the fabric but not with punch needle.  You work from the back so the loops appear on the front. 

 

back of fabric

 

 

front of fabic

 

The second part of Rule 1 is to remember that your design will be reversed from the front to back. You notice the hearts of my logo are in different positions in the pictures above. This usually doesn’t matter unless you are using words.  Remember to reverse your letters so they come out in the right direction on the front.  That means when you are punching, all the letters will be backward.

 

How you want your letter to look

 

 

How the letter should look on the back

to be punchneedled.

Now once you have picked your design and color and type of thread (many people use embroidery floss), put the fabric in your hoop.  Remember Rule 1 make sure the design of the fabric is facing up. Rule 2 is that the fabric should be as tight as you can get it in the hoop.  This allows the threads of the fabric to stretch apart (although you really can’t see it). When you are done punching and take the fabric out of the hoop, the fabric threads will tighten up around your punching.

Before you thread the needle make sure you have it at the loop length you want it.  This can be determined by either the dial or the shaft tube which ever comes with your needle so read the instructions that came with whatever needle you are using.

Once your needle is threaded (I won’t show that here because each needle is slightly different so follow the instructions that came with your needle), you are ready.  You don’t have to put a knot in the thread to keep the thread in the fabric.  Trust me as long as you don’t pull on the thread from the back or working side, the loops will stay in place. Rule 3 is that the beveled or angled edge of the needle needs to be facing in the direction of the stitching.

 

beveled edge of needle

 

Holding the needle (beveled side) in the direction you want to go, push/punch the needle through the fabric. Now gently pull the needle back out from the fabric but don’t lift it too high off the fabric.  If you do that you will have a loop on the working side.  You don’t want that. Now move the needle (in the direction that your beveled end is), just s couple of fabric threads and punch again.  Pull it gently out, move a couple of fabric threads and punch again.  (excuse my drawing - I am not the best at making diagrams but I wanted to give you an idea of how punchneedle looks. It is hard to give a cross view of the work with a photo).

 

You want your stitches next to each other but not touching.  If the stitches touch, the fabric will buckle or roll when it comes out of the hoop.  Now keep stitching until the area you are working on is filled in. I usually cut the thread with just a tiny tail. You don’t need to knot this end of the thread either.  Once you take the fabric out of the hoop, the fabric threads will hold the loops in place. 

That is punchneedle embroidery in a nutshell. Now I do have a warning for you.  If you end up enjoying it, you will be addicted.  And if you are like me, you will end up with more projects you want to do than time to do it all in.

 

©2018, 2021 Cheryl Fillion