Making a Father Christmas Doll - Part 4

The body of the doll.

I have started making a Father Christmas Doll.  In order to make a doll and have it ready before the holidays
get here means I have to make a fairly simple doll.  I need something that can be done quickly, but still look as if it has a lot of work in it.  One of the things that effect the look are the fabrics and trims chosen to decorate the doll body.  Even a fairly simple doll looks very nice when it has nice fabrics and a lot of detail to accessories.  Although at the moment the doll looks as if it won't amount to much to start with, once the details are added, you will be surprised at the end result.

Outer fabric, batting, and taped wires.

Wires bent into a loop and stitched seam.

Last blog I wrote about creating the body.  Today I am showing how the arms were created.  This was a very simple technique.  The arms are created from a seven inch by fourteen inch of the pre-quilted fabric, a rectangle the same size from batting (The directions called for polyester batting but I used cotton because I had some on hand.)  The right side (good side) of the fabric should be facing down.  Some eighteen inch long wires are used to stiffen the arms.  The directions called for two strands of eighteen gauge wire.  I had sixteen gauge wire.  To make sure that my dolls arms were stiff enough to pose I used three strands.  In all probability, two strands might have been enough, but I recently made some anthropomorphic dolls that I was not totally happy with because the wire called for in that project was not as stiff as I would have like it to be.  I did not want this doll to have floppy arms, so I went for more wire rather
than less wire.

Stuffed mitten will be sewn to the arm.

I bundled the wire strands together and wrapped them with masking tape every few inches to keep the wires together.  The wire I used was galvanized steel wire.  Although I have never had a problem, I have read that some people have had problems with copper wire turning green and bleeding through the fabric of the doll years after it was made.  I have never had that problem myself, but it is worth passing along that it could be worthwhile to
fully wrap copper wires to keep from having a damaged doll.  Some Father Christmas Dolls end up becoming family heirlooms.

Once the wires are bundled, the wires were laid along the long end of the fabrics and are rolled up.  At this point, the wires extend beyond the fabric by two inches on each side.  This may not be a problem if a pre-quilted cotton or wool fabric had been used for this project.  The pre-quilted fabric I used was an outer-wear fabric and it was very slippery.  The batting did not want to stick to the pre-quilted fabric and things were sliding around.  I used a dab of hot glue in each corner to hold the fabric and batting together.  The fabrics still tended to be slippery and wanted to come unrolled, but it was workable.  After I had it rolled up, I used rubber-bands to hold the fabric in place while I was sewing across the seam with a whip stitch.  I could have used hot glue for this, but I think that in the long run turning under the edge and sewing it has a nicer look than hot glue.  Sometimes hot glue will leave dark marks on the underside of a fabric.  If I had used a wool fabric, I could have gotten away without turning under the edge because it would not fray.  I had concerns about the fabric I used fraying over time.  Since the fabric was quilted in a diamond pattern I used the bottom of the diamonds as a guide to keep the seam straight. 

Once the fabric had been secured for the length of the arm, the wires were turned down to form a loop.  The loops will be inserted into the "hands" which in this case are just mittens.  The mitten is where I ran into my first problem with the doll.  The problem has to do with the fabric I selected for this part of the project.  The outer-wear fabric is much thicker than a pre-quilted cotton fabric.  It has more batting insulation.  The wrist of the mitten pattern was just too narrow for joining to the arm fabric.  The wires slid in well, but the difference in the diameter of the two pieces was just too much to bridge without it looking wrong.  I will have to redraw the pattern to make the wrist area of the mitten a little bigger.  This is really not a big deal.  It is not uncommon to have to rework a pattern to fit the particular needs of a doll.  Once I have the size correct, I will do a little more detail work on the thumb area.  The mitten fabric is flannel. 

This is about as far as I have come with this doll.  I will have more photos once I have the new mittens made.