How to Be Awesome at Making a Doll

I went to a craft store the other day to look at their clearance section because I heard there were some cool things there.  Among other things, I got a Make Your Own Doll kit. 

You know how I love kits. 

This was another, "fun happy joy easy" kit, where everything was printed on the material, and all you had to do was cut it out and the thing practically sewed itself together!  BLAM!  Instant awesome doll.

It was $4.48 on clearance, which I figured was cheaper than I could buy a decent doll, so I thought I'd give it a try.  And it came with material to make a reversible dress and two hair ribbons. Awesome!  (The kit didn't include stuffing, but I had some left over from some project a while back, so I figured I could use that.)

I cut out all the pieces while I was watching TV, and yeah, that was pretty easy. 

Am I the only one reminded of a crime scene?

Putting the doll together wasn't difficult at all.  Just sew right sides together and leave a hole in the middle for stuffing.  I can do that.

Try not to concentrate on the dead eyes.

Stuffing it wasn't hard either.  The stuffing I had was actually quilt batting, but not from this last quilt.  From a different one.  Anyway, so I had to tear it up to make it fluffy stuffing.  It was fun, and it made me feel like I was back in Colonial days, carding wool from the sheep!

Pictured: Polyester Sheep

Then came the hard part.  The dress turned out to be way more difficult that the doll, which doesn't make sense to me, but it was.  First of all, the directions were very vague, and I had trouble figuring out what they were talking about.  Not a lot of pictures to help either.

I finally got the inside and outside of the dress pieced together separately and sewn on the sides of each.  Then I had to sew the two sides together.  Which I did.

Inside out.

The end result was something that only a deformed alien baby doll could have worn.  One without a head.

So I got out my seam ripper and took out all the seams.  By the time I was finished, I was covered in little tiny pieces of thread and not in a very good mood.

I then re-pieced the inside and outside together, right side out this time, and managed to sew a dress that a human baby doll could wear.

Mostly human

One problem I had was that the dress pieces weren't all the same size when I cut them out, and I cut them out carefully, so I think they were just printed wrong.  I had to trim the pieces quite a bit, making the "dress" more like a "shirt" or "dress they wore on The Brady Bunch, when apparently, bending over was out of style."

I did have to go buy more stuffing, because I ran out after I stuffed the arms, legs, and pigtails.  Also, in a couple of places, the seam wasn't strong I guess, so I had to patch that up when I sewed up the stuffing hole.  The directions said to use a blanket stitch, and I really should have looked that up, because mine came out looking very unlike a blanket stitch.  In fact, it looked kind of like the doll tried to sew itself up with it's little, barely opposable thumbs. 

Ok, let's grade doll making.

Time: A-
Difficulty: A-
Expense:  A-
Fun: A-
Relaxing: B+

It took a weekend of working on it a little at a time, but really, it didn't take more than a couple of hours from start to finish.  Total cost was like $8, which is still less than some dolls, but not as cheap as it could have been.  And it was fun and relaxing up until I  had to redo the stupid dress.

All in all, I don't think I'll be giving this as a gift, like I'd hoped.  I'll keep it for when I have kids.  They'll be used to crappy, homemade toys.