I wanted to make something for Ava’s first birthday next week but did not know what to do and didn’t have much time, only a few hours this weekend, so I did a little search earlier in the week and came across some very cute dolls.

After spending far too much time on Pinterest looking at all of the cute versions of this doll pattern that had been made, all in the name of research of course 🙂 I started the doll Saturday afternoon and had her finished on Sunday evening.

The sources for all these pictures can be found on my Pinterest sewing board.

I am very pleased with her, I have never made anything like this before, have often looked at stuffed toy patterns and thought that they were gorgeous but this is the first that I have attempted and apart from a couple of minor setbacks everything was very easy to do.

I am particularly pleased with the embroidered face, I spent quite a lot of time looking at different options then decided to embroider a whole eye but stopped halfway up, I think it looks quite lifelike.

I used a combination of two free patterns, the Black Apple Doll pattern for the body, arms and legs and the Josephine doll pattern for the head as I wanted a more rounded shape and cut my own hair pattern after looking at all of the photos on Pinterest. I also made some felt plaits which I sewed together before attaching to the head as the original doll has short hair.

I sewed the legs and arms onto the body before tacking it together but still had a few issues with that stage. I had to do the bottom seam 3 times to get the legs secured and then in the process of pulling the doll the right way out lost one of the arms. This is what it looked like yesterday afternoon.

The instructions say, ‘flip the body’,  but it was more like a, ‘Call the Midwife’, difficult birth scene 😉 Luckily the neonatal surgeons were on hand to re-attach the arm so all was good.

I made a little elasticated skirt and a flower bow to disguise where the sewing up of the head got a little bumpy. The body is the original dress for the doll but after seeing all the cute little skirts on the Pinterest dolls I had to make one. And there you have it, one very cute little doll and all made from stash, no new purchases at all.

Am very tempted to make some more of these, I love the split arms to give sleeves in some of the inspiration photos above and the cute little shoes, we shall see how much time I have to play later in the summer!

For future dolls I would like to try and get the arms laying flatter against the body and maybe play with the proportions of the arms as well. I am very pleased with this first one though.She has been sitting next to me all day helping me write my book chapter!

Take care and thanks for visiting.