How to Make Felt Dolls for Beginners

"Felt doll" covers two crafts that share almost nothing but a name. One is a sculpture built from loose wool with a barbed needle; the other is a soft toy cut and sewn from felt fabric. Decide which you are making before you buy anything.

• Needle felted wool doll — sculptural, seamless, firm, made from fibre. No sewing required.
• Sewn felt fabric doll — flat pieces of wool felt cut and stitched, then stuffed. Faster, softer, and it needs a needle and thread rather than a felting needle.

Method one: a needle felted doll

What you need

• Core wool, 20–30 g for a doll about 15 cm tall
• Skin-toned wool for the head and hands
• Coloured wool for clothing
• Wool roving for hair
• 38 and 40 gauge needles, foam pad
• Optional: aluminium wire for a poseable body

The body

1. Head first. Wind core wool into a firm ball and needle it hard — a doll's head should be dense, because every feature you add later depends on a surface that does not move. Method in how to needle felt a ball.
2. Skin layer. Wrap a thin veil of skin-toned wool over the head and needle it down with a 40 gauge at a shallow angle for a smooth finish.
3. Body. A tapered cylinder or cone, felted firm, flat at the base if the doll is to stand.
4. Join. Leave loose fibre at the top of the body, press the head on, and needle those fibres up into the head from several angles. Then blend a veil over the neck.
5. Arms and legs. Roll thin sausages, leave the ends loose, and needle those loose ends into the body deeply. For anything poseable, put wire down the middle — see wire armature for needle felting.

The face

Restraint wins. A doll with two small needled dots for eyes and a suggestion of a mouth reads as gentle; a doll with a fully modelled face usually reads as unsettling.

• Eyes: needle a shallow socket first, then add a tiny wisp of dark wool, or embroider two French knots.
• Cheeks: the faintest veil of pink, needled very lightly.
• Nose: usually better left out entirely at this scale.

Hair from roving

1. Lay a length of wool roving over the head, front to back, longer than the finished hair.
2. Needle a firm line down the centre parting to fix it.
3. Work around the hairline, needling the roving down where it meets the face.
4. Trim to length, or plait, or twist and pin into a bun and needle it in place.

Curly locks, mohair and dyed roving all work. Wool roving is by far the most convincing doll hair there is, and it can be brushed.

Method two: a sewn felt doll

Cut two identical body shapes from wool felt, stitch around the edge with a blanket stitch leaving a gap, stuff, and close. That is the whole construction — felt does not fray, so there are no seam allowances, no hemming and no turning through.

Clothes are cut from more felt and either stitched on or made as separate pieces. Faces are embroidered. It is the right method for a doll that will be played with hard, and for making several the same.

Stuffing

• Wool batting — firm, weighty, natural, traditional for waldorf dolls. Tease it into loose handfuls rather than pushing sheets in whole, or you get lumps. See wool batting for felting.
• Polyester toy filling — lighter, cheaper, machine washable.

Stuff firmly. An under-stuffed doll goes shapeless within a week of being loved.

Making one safe for a small child

• No beads, no buttons, no glued anything. Embroider or needle every feature.
• Tug-test each limb hard before handing it over.
• Keep hair short and firmly attached, or needle it down all over.
• Use undyed or well-rinsed wool — see is merino wool itchy on dye residue.
• Count the needles back into the tin. A felting needle lost in a nursery floor is the real hazard here, as covered in is needle felting dangerous.

A sensible first doll

Make a simple gnome-shaped figure before attempting anything with limbs: a firm cone, a head, wool hair, no arms. It teaches the join, the proportions and the face, and it looks finished rather than half-made. From there, add arms, then legs, then wire. The related method is in felted gnome.