Clothes pin Dolls...how to make them and their clothes

You may have seen the little clothes pin family and their home I created for Christmas, well here is a bit more detail on how to make these little dolls and some things to dress them in.

The initial inspiration for these clothes pin dolls came from a Better Homes and Garden magazine with clothes pin dolly angels, elves and skating girls. I based the skirt and tops on the patterns in the magazine, modified somewhat to create these dollies instead.

What you need

• Wooden old style clothes pegs or 'clothes pins'
• Bits of felt, fabric, ribbon, wool
• Pipe cleaners (chenille sticks)
• Drill with 2/2.5mm drill bit
• Fabric glue
• Pens
• Paper/card if you want to make clothes patterns
• Scissors / pinking shears
• Imagination

All of these dolls have flexible, moveable pipe cleaner arms that are attached through the peg itself. Use the drill to make a small hole all the way through the peg at ‘shoulder’ level. Insert pipe cleaner cut to about 8cm (not yet cut in picture below).  

middle - clothes pin with hole drilled at 'shoulder', right - insert pipe cleaner 'arms'

Embroidered Denim Skirt

Mark and cut out skirt. Using pinking shears for the bottom of the skirt will mean you don’t need to worry about hemming.

Embroider whatever takes your fancy – a few daisy stitch flowers and some running stitch perhaps.

Fold skirt in half, right sides together and either hand or machine stitch a seam down the matching straight edge.

Turn right side out and press seam flat.

Pinch the ‘legs’ of the dolly together to pull the skirt up and onto the doll if you have already inserted the pipe cleaner arms, (I hadn’t in this picture so just pulled it over the head if not). Use a little bit of glue to secure skirt in place once you have it in the right position.

Denim Jeans

This method uses an old pair of jeans, cut so that the original hem is still intact. Each ‘leg’ of the jeans is made separately.

The focal point in these pictures is terrible – sorry!

Cut out 2 rectangles approx. 6cm x 5cm, ideally including the original hem line of the jeans as you can see in this picture.

For each rectangle - Turn over approx. 1 cm at the opposite end to the original hem line and straight stitch (black stitch in photo).

Then fold in half to match up other raw edges and straight stitch again.

Turn right side out & you should have a fabric tube that will become one leg of the jeans.
Slip each ‘leg’ of the jeans on over a separate peg ‘leg’, with the original jean’s hem line at the bottom as shown. You may need to gently prise the peg open a little to get all the fabric to fit but the fact it is snug will help hold the jean in place. Use glue at the ‘waist’ to secure the top of the jeans once you have pulled them up as far as they can go.

Once you pull the top on you won’t notice that the jean legs were made up separately.

Top or dress

 Cut out a cross shape as shown below (pen lines). If you want to make a dress then extend two opposite ends so that they are even longer than drawn.

One step that is worth doing before you go any further is to cut a small hole for the head to fit through and reinforcing this with a tight zig zag or blanket stitch. I did this on the blue and orange top first up and this made it much easier/neater than leaving it until after stitching the side seams.
 
Freestyle from here on in though - you can fold over and make a proper seamed sleevse and bottom of the top before turning inside out and stitching the sleeve and side seams...

 ...or... cut sleeve and bottom edges using pinking shears and don't bother folding over and stitching. You can also machine stitch side seams (above), or hand stitch (below).

 Once all the seams are finished, turn inside out (add a neck hole if you didn't earlier)...

And then 'dress' your doll. Much easier if you do this with the 'arms' pointed upwards.

Add a tie on or stitched on belt if you like.

  

 

Felt plaited hair

Cut out a piece of felt as shown – the middle part is slightly smaller than an Australian 5 cent piece, and each ‘strand’ is about  6mm wide and 60mm long. Cut a notch as shown.

Working from each side, plait the 3 strands of felt and then secure well with ribbon.  Make a bit of a fringe by making lots of small cuts in the felt (2mm deep & approx. 1mm apart) around the side opposite to the notch you made.

To attach the hair, glue the back and sides of the doll’s head & then drape the plaits over each side and smooth across the forehead where you created the fringe. I generally found that the small notch shown in the first picture wasn’t big enough, so you may need to cut away additional felt at the back of the head before smoothing this down.

Wool Hair

Wrap wool around two fingers and tie in the middle. The thickness and length of the hair will depend on how wide your fingers are apart, and how many times you wrap the wool around. Glue in place on the head. 

This hair style looks better with a hat, or seed pod beret!

Hands

The easiest way I found to do this was to freeform stitch multiple ‘hands’ as shown – skinny ‘U’ shapes. Each stitched ‘U’ shape is about 5-7mm wide and 30mm deep.

Then cut them out close to the stitching

Have your pipe cleaner arms inserted into the peg & any top/dress already on the doll before you add the hands. Roll up the sleeves a bit to avoid getting glue onto the top/dress. Then pop some glue into the open end of the hand…

…and then insert the pipe cleaner ‘arm’ all the way into the felt hand.  

Carefully roll down the sleeves of the top/dress to hide the raw edge of the felt and the pipe cleaner. And then add the other hand the same way.

Hat

This technique worked really well and has held up even more surprisingly well to playing, prying fingers! Glue around the top of the doll’s head and then a strand of glossy cord wound round and round from the centre of the head outwards to make the top of the hat. Once you reach the forehead level, start attaching each consecutive wind of the cord onto itself to make the brim – gluing along the outer edge of the cord to hold it in place as you go. 

 

Stabilising Stands

My dad made these for me in his wood working pad. A round piece of wood about 25mm diameter and 15mm high with a smaller hole about 12mm diameter and 8mm deep drilled in the middle. A gentle squeeze of the peggy doll legs to insert the dolly and then dolly can stand!

Happy families!

Clothes pin dolls and a shoebox doll house

Some clothes pin or peg dollies and a shoebox house for them to live in. This was one of Little Imp’s Christmas gifts, and she WAS impressed (thank goodness!).  

So much fun to make, and really not that hard. Just a bit of mess and imagination required.

Here are some of the initial characters:

And their shoe box home:

Come inside and have a play!

Apparently there was a mass evacuation due to a fire in the house! I'm assured everyone was ok (even though they might not look it!!) 

More detail on how I made the house and the dolls is on its way....

Peg Dolly Angels

A chorus of Angels have been created this Christmas, although I have only photographed one.
Pattern courtesy of Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

Felt, dolly peg and pipe cleaners are the main ingredients, with embroidery thread to hold the felt together/ embellish the wings and then some glue to hold the wings, halo and dress in place.

Pop the finished dress over the peg to dress the angel and thread the pipe cleaner through the sleeves to make the arms and then twist the extra lengths of pipe cleaner up behind the head to create the halo. Add a pen drawn face and some slippers to finish.

A simple dress or top

I’m still a bit wimpy when it comes to attempting sewing clothing, so I kind of forced myself to give this a go. Perhaps then it would have been wiser to start with a project where I had a pattern, but no – I decided to do what all the kids clothing super-sewer-bloggers tell you to do – “just work out a rough pattern from another piece of clothing that fits your child”. Easier said than done. Or maybe my mistake was trying to make the top a size bigger because it ended up maybe 2 sizes bigger!

Overall though, it has worked, and maybe I will have the confidence now to try something a bit more complicated….in the New Year. And either way, Little Imp is pretty happy with this version (and the benefit of my errors is that it will fit her next year too!)

This is what I did.

Worked out a pattern back and front as shown. The dotted line indicates where I cut the lining to.

Cut one front and one back from the main print fabric.

Cut one front and one back from the lining fabric (up to the dotted line shown on the paper pattern)

Cut 2 straps (11”x 2”) each out of main print and lining fabrics.

When cutting out the patterns I used my quilting ruler and rotary cutter to cut all the long straight edges – super easy and faster than scissors.

all the cut pieces of fabric - red for lining & Grinch print for the outer

 Straps: 

For each strap place lining and main fabric right sides together & pin. Sew straight stitch around 3 edges, leaving one short end open (I used a ¼” quilting foot to keep seams super neat).

 Clip corners as shown & then turn right side out through the open end. Poke corners through if needed to make them nice & neat and then take time and iron straps flat, working fabric with your fingers if needed as you iron to get nice neat edges.

Straight stitch around the same 3 edges with a ¼” seam to finish strap.

Lining:

Fold over the bottom raw edge twice, iron and straight stitch using matching thread to finish the bottom of both front and back lining pieces to prevent fraying.

Next, lay front and back lining pieces right sides together and pin down side seams, matching up top corner. Straight stitch together down each side seam with matching thread, starting from the top to make sure that this join is neat and matching.  My machine has a straight stitch that also finishes the edge at the same time - if yours doesn’t then also zigzag the raw edges after straight stitching.

 Outer:

Lay front and back pieces of main print fabric right sides together, pin and then sew side seams using matching thread as you did for the lining.

lining and main sections sewn and finished down both side seams

 Assembly: 

Turn lining right side out. Iron side seams flat, one facing toward the front and one facing toward the back.

 Iron side seams in outer layer flat too – but have these facing opposite directions to the lining seams. This will make it easier to achieve a neat join under the arms.

Slip the lining into the outer main fabric, so that right sides end up facing each other.

Match up & pin raw edges of lining & outer along top of dress, ensuring that the side seam joins match up. If you have ironed the seams facing in opposite directions they should lie nice and flat at the join of the side seams as shown in the photo.

Then stitch the main fabric to the lining around the front of the dress.

Turn the dress right side out and pin the straps in place at the front of the dress. Then, if you can, get your model (an unwilling model in this instance!) to try on the dress so that you can work out how long the straps should be. Mark this and then remove, leaving your model in peace! Turn dress inside out again.

 This picture shows the roughly marked line on the right hand side.

Remove both straps and, using a quilting ruler if you have one, or any ruler if you don't, mark  even, straight lines on both straps.

Then slip the straps in between the lining and the outer fabric, lining up with the strap marks you made before to get the right length, and position so they will line up evenly over the shoulders. Also make sure that the main print side of the strap is facing upwards.

 Pin in place, and then stitch across the back to join main fabric to lining, catching the straps as you go. I didn't trim the straps down as this way I could potentially extend them in time if Little Imp grows!

Then open out the dress, so that you see the right side of the main fabric & the lining. The lining will be on one side & the main fabric to the other. Now you need to understitch the lining to help stop it rolling over to the outside where it can be seen. Slip the lining under the presser foot with the seam allowances facing the lining. Stitch through all these layers (lining and all seam allowance layers) about 2mm from the seam as shown.

When you fold the lining back into the dress you will have a nice neat edge (a bit hard to see the understitching in this picture as I used matching red thread). Iron to get really crisp edges.

You can also top stitch all the way around the top of the dress. Use thread that coordinates with main fabric & then stitch all the way around about 1/4 inch from the edge on the right side of the fabric, catching the lining as you go.  This just finishes the edges nicely.

Hemming

Iron hem over twice (about 1cm for each fold) to enclose the raw edges.

And then straight stitch to secure. I used my 1/4 inch foot to help stop wobbly stitching!

Finishing
Sew buttons (or pom poms) onto the front edge of the straps as shown. These are purely for decoration.

On one of the straps add a press and a matching stud in the corresponding spot on the dress itself. Finally, stitch the other strap down securely. I find that you only really need one strap able to be opened to get the dress on & off.

Hopefully your model will be a bit more willing to wear it now there are no pins in sight!