Old Jeans project 3/3 (This title was added post facto)

Okay, so, we’ve had a wine-bottle bag, and a purse. But what to do with all of the scraps left over from trimming things down–not to mention the leg’s worth of fabric you have left? Use it for doll stuffing and clothing, of course!

Okay, so, a little back-story on this project: about a year ago, I made a doll to commemorate recovering from an illness. I had a lot of fun with the project, because I was able to use a lot of random stuff I had sitting around the house–a skein of yarn, a dishtowel, a silk scarf with a long tear in it…–to make her. While she herself is quite nifty, I’ve been thinking that it’s time I made a friend for her. As she was an archetypal representation of the feminine, I thought it was time to make an archetypal representation of the masculine to go with her. A warrior dude, if you will. (Yeah, I know, soft dolls just aren’t very masculine. Oh well! I tried.)

Anyway, this post will, hopefully, not be as photointensive as the past few. I realized that, although my camera is great for taking pretty pics, it’s not so good for taking pictures that fit well on my computer screen or load quickly. So, here’s the finished product:

Aren’t they cute? They’re my little dishtowel couple.

Anyway… Here’s a wee “how-to”. I’m pretty sure this one is going to rank among the worst how-to’s of all time, but I’m tired, fighting a cold, and not too worried that anyone will actually read this and try to replicate it. If you want better directions, leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to reply!

Materials & Tools

1 Dishtowel
1 Ball of yarn
Assorted materials for stuffing. (In this case, yarn, jean scraps, and the cotton stuff you get from the inside of supplement and vitamin bottles.)
String
Needle and Thread
Stuff for making clothes (in this case, Jeans fabric, and a long piece of red ribbon.)
Safety Pins
Scissors

Directions

Make a tight ball of yarn.
Lay your dishcloth out flat. Put the ball of yarn about 1/5 of the way down the length of the dishcloth, in the middle of the cloth.
Fold the top 1/5th of the fabric over the ball. Wrap string around it to make the doll’s head.
assuming that the folded parts will become arms, cut the discloth to make body, leg and arm segments. The cut for the arms should be just under the folded section. The body section should be about 2/5ths of the remaining fabric, and the rest should be the legs. Don’t cut everything through to the center, otherwise, you will have some serious issues later. (See picture for a better idea on the cuts.)

Put stuffing in arms. You may find that there is more fabric than makes reasonable length arms. that’s fine. fold the bits toward what would be “hands” in toward the head, then fold the longer part of the arm fabric around the stuffing. Sew little hands at the end, and wrap string around the arms to help them keep their shape.
Stuff the body. You want to try to make sure that there is a lot of stuffing in the body, because otherwise your doll won’t sit up well. Wrap the fabric of the body both around the stuffing and then back over the shoulders to meet in the back. (Almost like making a front-crossing halter top.) Stitch the fabric behind the back to hold it in place. This might do odd things to the fabric from the doll’s legs. Fear not. When stuffed, they will look fine!

Stuff the legs. As with the arms, they may be “too long” and require creative wrapping/sewing to be brought to the right dimensions to look normal on the doll’s body. Wrap the legs with string for definition.

At this point, you should have a rough plain doll. Now it’s time to make clothes! For This guy’s clothes, it was really easy.

Take the “calf-down” portion of a jeans leg, and cut up the middle until you have about 3 inches left at the top.
Turn this inside-out, and sew the cut-edges together to make a pair of pants.
Put pants on doll.
Take a long piece of fabric. Cut a hole in the middle of the fabric and pull it over the doll’s head to make a tunic.
Take a long piece of ribbon and wrap it around the doll so that you have a vest/belt/obi thing. (See picture.)
Next: Hair! Start by wrapping yarn around your fingers. (For my lady doll, I did it by wrapping the yarn around my arm from the thumb/index finger joint down around my elbow and back up. For this guy, not so much.) Once you have about 20 wraps, stop. Tie off the yarn to make a central part.
Cut the yarn on the center seam that is diametrically opposite of the place where you tied off the yarn to begin with. (See diagram below. It will help clarify what the heck I’m talking about.)

Center this on the doll’s head to make hair. Stitch on with an all-over whipstich. I’d start by just going along the “center part” and then leaving the rest until after you’ve styled it a bit. I gave this guy bangs and a top-knot of sorts.
Have fun! For the finishing touch, I made him a sword out of a binder clip that was holding a plastic-spoon handle and covered with duct-tape.