PATTERNS

This is the basic body for all the dolls, the heads may vary according to the doll you are making, for example, the Billie doll has a diamond shape pattern, meanwhile the Tre and Mike dolls have an oval kind of amorphous shape, XD. I don't want to flood this part of the blog with tons of head shapes, so I am only uploading the patterns for Billie, Mike and Trè. If any of you want to make another character inspired doll, just take on count what I've specifyed about the heads, it's important, n order to give them that quality that makes the doll resemble to the musician or actor/actress you want to make a doll of. to print, fit all patterns to an A4 sheet (click on the image)

About the face pattern :

What we did, was drawing with vectors the real faces on Coral Draw, if you know how to work with Corel or any other design program, great!, if not, post a comment asking for the graphics, give us your email we will send it to you, then print them and use them as an stencil ( you can do it with contact paper, or just with paper, cutting it as an stencil. (try to calculate the size of the print to match the size of the doll's head) If you are here looking to make a Freddy Mercury, Spielberg or Tom Hanks doll, hang around those dolls are on my list of thing to do.

PROCEDURE

Once you've made your patterns, copy them onto the fabric, remeber you have to make two pieces for each pattern 2 for the body and 2 for the head.

Sewing
If you don't have a sewing machine (better yet, sewing cotton with sewing machines is hell), handsew with small stitches (backstitch style), to have a almost perfect sawing, put your pieces together and fix them with pins, then mark the fabric with an outline so that you have a guide to follow, start to saw Sew the body, starting by the shoulders, then attach the arms, saw the rest of the body and leave the neck open.
Turn inside out
Stuff it with fiberfill, this might get a bit tricky, but try to stuff it with a wooden stick or whatever you have in hand fill the legs first and the fill the arms, leave a space without fiberfill between the arms and the body, it will give movement to the arms.
Fill the head lightly and Fill the neck firmly, stitch the head and body openings.

THE HAIR

Some vids how to make the wig....sorry for the bad english :(

DRAWING THE FACE
Probably you are wondering how to print the correct size for the face graphic, what you need to do (I use photoshop) is choose the print preview and rezise the image about a forth of the size of an A4 sheet a bit larger maybe, print a draft and be sure the size of the stencil matches the size of the doll head, if it needs any correction resize again until you are satisfyed with the size.



Attaching the head

MATERIAL

First things first, what you need to start up your doll:
- Cotton Jersey: (for the body) or any type of fabric that seems like the fabric of which T-shirts are made of. (white is ok, but you will need to dye the fabric, I dyed the fabric of my dolls with coffee,actually I would not recommend this, since at some point you will have to wash the thingy and the color will wash away, so if you find fabric in a suitable color for the skin, buy that one)
- Polyester Fiberfill: as needed, normally this is sold in kgs, is rather cheap, I bought 1/2kg and it was enough to stuff 5 dolls.
- Cloth and accesories: ok, here you can get creative, you can totally skip buying fabrics for the wardrobe, look around your closet and take your oldest shirts, tshirts, pants etc, those that are about to be thrown and use them.
-Wool yarn (hair): you can use wool or that type of plush speacilly made for dolls hair, I don't know the name of it in english, so later i am going to post a picture of it. My dolls, have wool yarn hair, but if you want to trash your dolls, and sleep with them and use them as your pillows, you will have to use something that wont fall appart too easily.
- Acrilyc paints or Fabric paints: those are to paint the faces, if you are by now getting all stressed about how are you going to paint the face, relaaaax, just send us an email telling us who do you want to make as a doll, we will send you the graphics :)
-Cardboard: to make the patterns
-Chalk: to draw your patterns into the fabrics
-Needles and threads.

To all of you, I would really want to see your proyects, so when you finish them, please send us pics of them :) .

Magaly, WE NEED TO MAKE THE FREDDIE MERCURY ONE!.

Due to the requests Maru have been receiving at the GDA forum, and to the receptive and frantic popularity of "Billito" with some of our closests friends, we've decided to open up a blog about dolls, YES!, here you can find out how to make your own dolls!!, actually, is really easy we will be uploading vids and pics, for all of you who never ever have had a needle on your hands....don't worry we will put our best effort to help you through your proyect.