For one 2½ inch tall Pipe-cleaner doll you’ll need:
- 1 12-inch pipe cleaner (for one doll)
- Flesh-colored embroidery floss (I used DMC 3774), as well as other colors to match felt
- Felt for clothing
- Wooden bead for head (10mm-15mm)
- Acorn cap for hat
- Fuzzy yarn or wool roving for hair
- Scissors
- Ruler
- Glue
- Optional: Acrylic paint, colored pencils or permanent pen for face

(You may also wish to embroider the clothing, so for easy embroidery instructions click here.)

Here are some of the supplies to give you a visual. Make sure you have plenty of flesh-colored floss for the body!

First you will want bend the pipe cleaner following these measurements: for the neck, ¾”; for the arms 1″ both ways; 1¾” for the outside of the legs; and 1½” inside the legs. This should use up the whole pipe cleaner.

To begin wrapping, unbend one of the hands, hold the embroidery floss on the pipe cleaner…

…and wrap it around the pipe cleaner! It’s pretty easy. Just make sure you twist out the floss from time to time so it will fan a bit, creating better coverage. (Once you get going you’ll understand - it may start to twist back on itself.) (While working, I hold the pipe cleaner with my left hand, and wrap with my right.)

Once you have the tip of the hand wrapped, bend it back in place and wrap both sides together. Continue wrapping up the arm until you reach the body. Repeat this with the other arm as well.

The feet are wrapped the same way as the arms, though you may wish to use another color for shoes. When switching colors, don’t tie a knot - it’ll leave a bump. Rather, wrap the flesh color over the remains of the shoe color, and then continue wrapping towards the body.

Once you finish all the limbs, wrap the body and the neck like so.

Take your wooden bead and make sure it fits on the neck. Use the glue to attach the hair, then the cap on top. You may wish to pencil the face on at this point. (This step you may do before or after you sew the clothes on. Just don’t glue the head on yet.)

This is the pattern for the basic shirt. Make the sleeves as long or short as you wish. Fold it in half to cut the neck hole as well. A jumper or dress can be made in a similar manner, adjusting neck and skirt area as necessary.

Make a buttonhole stitch along the ends of the sleeve and bodice, tying it off on the inside. (If the shirt will be under a jumper, finishing the bodice won’t be needed.)

This is the first time I’ve ever added a collar to a shirt, and it was very easy. Embroider with the buttonhole stitch before attaching it to the shirt. Slip the shirt over the [headless] neck and body, then sew the sides together with the buttonhole stitch.

Here is what the jumper looks like underneath, while finishing the armholes. I usually like to decorate the front with simple embroidery.

Sewing up the sides…

…Making a simple hooded cape. After gluing on the head, painting on a face, and trimming the hair, you now have your very own pipe cleaner doll!

And here is Little Red Riding hood!

For another tutorial on a variation of the wee doll, click here.
Coming soon - wee pants tutorial!

This is week 2 of Simply Vintagegirl’s A Homemade Christmas! Come and join us as we post weekly on gifts from the heart and hand!

Every year we go to our Granny’s on Christmas day to visit with family, eat a lot of chili and dessert, and exchange gifts. One year I made a clothe doll for my cousin, and another for a friend (her birthday was soon after Christmas). They, too, have felt clothing, but their hair was sewn-on mohair, and their faces were simply embroidered.

This is the hand-sewn doll I made for my friend:

This is my little cousin with the doll I made for her:

I have quite a few other clothe dolls, mostly 6 inches tall and under. I’ll show some more pictures of one I made with a cotton dress named Jubilee:

There are also some little bunny friends, the one in blue made from a similar pattern:

Mr. Bunny, Mirabel, and Little Miss Bunny:

Close-up of Jubilee:

Back of Jubilee’s dress:

And all the under-pinnings, too!

Jubilee’s dress was a real challenge, simply because I had to invent a pattern for it all by myself. And then I lost it! So if I make any more I’ll have to do that all over again.This doll here is about 2 inches tall. If you want to make one, I recommend starting with a pattern no less than 6 inches tall. Hand-sewing takes more time, but it feels so rewarding once they’re done.

This is the general idea I go by when making a pattern. It is hard to make your own perfect pattern without trial and error, but you learn a lot in the process.

The most important thing to do while sewing is to sew extra reinforcing seams along the more vulnerable parts. This, too, takes more time, but it is a real tragedy when they start to unravel. Trust me.

Sew extra around the tips of the arms and legs, at the under arms and between legs, and at the neck. Also trim around major concave and convex curves.

This is how I sew on their fuzzy hair. I usually start in the middle of the head and work outwards, just sewing on loop after loop in a spiraled path on the back of the head:

A finished doll, or even a kit would be a great gift for extra girl time!

My sister has had the brilliant idea of starting a meme on Homemade gifts for Christmas. The sweet and economical blessing of giving one’s time as well as something meaningful to someone you love has always held a special place in all of our hearts. Emily is now hosting a weekly series of posts and Mr. Linkys where we all can gather and share past gifts, current projects, and ideas for future gifts that have come from our hearts as well as our hands.

“A Homemade Christmas” is beginning today over at Emily’s blog, SimplyVintagegirl.com. Come on over and join us as we rediscover the joy of handmade Christmas gifts!

Today my AHC is on some things I have made in the past. I have found that these little people are very fun to make, and even though they took a little time, they were well worth the effort. The tallest one here is just over three inches. The patterns came from a book I got through inter-library loan awhile back: Felt Wee Folk, by Sally Mavor.

Sally Mavor’s books are so inspirational! Check some of them out from your library, or get them through inter-library loan. The bodies are made from from pipe cleaners wrapped with embroidery floss, wooden beads for the heads, and acorn caps for their hats! She recommends using reall wool felt for the clothing, and wool roving for the hair - but I have gotten away with using regular felt and fuzzy yarn for their clothing and hair just fine. Only the most basic sewing and embroidery skills are needed.

These make great gifts for sisters, cousins, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and young girlfriends. You could sew little traveling bags or build shoe box houses to keep them safe in, or make a kit to share with sisters or dear cousins.

The sky is the limit!

This is Olivia. She is very smart and adventurous. I thought I had lost her once, when one day a friend of mine stuck his hand in the couch and pulled up - OLIVIA!!!

This is Eleanor (the girl, not the cup). She is probably the most girly-girl of my little troop. She could spend hours playing make-believe tea party and dress-up. I don’t know where she gets it.

These dolls are only a few samples of the personalities that have surfaced in my experimentations in doll-making. Their bodies are made of pipe-cleaners wrapped in embroidery floss, and are clothed in felt attire. With “curiosity-yarn” for hair (I made that up) and little acorn hats, their wooden bead heads keep very warm and snug.

If any of you are interested in the patterns for the dolls, I will post them. They make a good mother-daughter project for a long winter’s day.  And a small house for them to live in made of a shoe box, papier-maché and acrylic paint would suit them just fine!