Making a Waldorf inspired doll-part 1:the head

In June I had my second baby. The rush of late night feeding and nappy changes are just starting to settle down and I'm finding time, after the kids are down for the night to have a little me time. When I get some me time I usually take to whatever craft has most recently caught my attention. I love to knit and sew but will happily turn my hand to almost any craft or DIY.
  My current passion is for doll making, I look at dolls and imagine them becoming playful companions for my children when they leave babyhood behind.
  As a teacher I have often encountered Waldorf dolls and always wanted to have a go at making one or two. When my nieces reached their third and fourth birthdays I decided that it was time to begin. I started by searching online and have been blown away by the level of detail in the Waldorf inspired dolls I have discovered, and have completely fallen in love with the dolls from fig and me and poppenliefde in particular. I set out determined to make a passable attempt at my own Waldorf inspired dolls. While the children were happy with my first attempts at these dolls, I was less so. Sadly they just don't match up with what I had envisioned.

 
The doll I made for my daughter 'Hattie'

  I'm now starting some new dolls. A large more traditional doll for my youngest daughter and two more slender styled dolls with needle felted faces for my nieces. Today I am going to talk you through the process I go through to make my dolls, using the doll I'm making for one of my nieces as a model.
Forming the head.
I've tried a few different ways of making Waldorf style doll heads in the past. With my first dolls I used this tutorial. I love the detail in this video tutorial, particularly when you're just starting out in doll making. For my current doll I knew I wanted to incorporate some needle felted features so I changed things up a bit.
  I started out by rolling a narrow strip of wool batt into a ball and needle felting it firmly to create the core of my head. From there I added more thin strips of batting winding them tightly round the core and needle felting as I went. as I was felting the head reasonably firmly I kept a doll needle nearby and ensured I could still pass the needle through the head so I knew I wouldn't have any problems with embroidery later on.
  Once the head was roughly the right size I wrapped it in one sheet of batting pulling it tightly around the neck. I know many people like to use lengths of batting to create a star shape which is then wrapped around the head, and I have used this method on some of my previous dolls. I find I prefer to use one sheet of batting as I find it makes a thicker and more supportive neck which is so important for This style of doll.

I then tightly tie off round the neck. I then lightly felted the head and firmly felted the neck to ensure it was strong and supportive! I could then move on to the more creative needle felting. I tied string horizontally around the head to mark the eye line of the doll but did not tie vertically as I was concerned this would create a rounder head than I was going for. I then used my felting needles to felt and shape the neck of the doll head. I made sure i had felted the neck firmly so that i was confident it would support the head long term.
Adding Needle Felted details.


 Once this was done I began felting the features. This needs to be done quite firmly and you want to exaggerate the dolls features as they will become more subtle after adding doll skin. I began by shaping some wool batting into cheek shapes and adding them to the doll head before felting them firmly in place.I continued to add smaller chunks of wool until I was happy with the shape of the dolls cheeks. I then moved on to the nose of the doll. Once again I initially formed the nose shape separately on a felting mat before felting it into place on the doll. Once in place i continued to shape the nose until i was happy with its shape and size. For the lips i rolled some batting into a sausage shape and fixed it in place before felting to create the lips shape. I then covered the doll head in stockinette and tied off around the neck and eye line again to add more definition.
Adding the doll skin and embroidery.
The next step for my doll was to get her skin. I drew around my doll head on doubled doll skin fabric to get the shape and stitched using triple stitch. Once this was in place i hand sewed the skin on the top of the head as tightly as possible without causing creases.

I was a bit disappointed at the loss of much of the felted details after adding the skin. I think next time I will exaggerate the features more and make the doll skin a bit looser so they will come through a bit more. I am quite pleased with the overall look of her face though. (I often feel let down by more poor embroidery skill when i reach this point!)
I hope you've enjoyed reading about how i create my doll heads, I'd love to read your thoughts on this doll and my process! In my next post i will be detailing how I made a mohair wig using a crochet with sewn mohair weft. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, I hope you'll pop by to have a look!
xx