Making felt dolls

My mother is very creative and crafty and I like to think I get some of my creativity from her!  During our last visit my mother taught me how to make felt dolls!  I have seen other bloggers/crafters making these and have always thought they were super cute!  This doll combines wet felting with dry felting techniques.  I am sure there are other ways to do it but this is the method we used.

we used quilting batting in which to felt the wool onto 

We used a toilet paper roll as our guide for size of skirt

Using a felting needle we felted the colored wool onto the quilt batting

Felt the two sides together or you can sew them together if you perfer

In order to make the head take a small bowl and put three drops of liquid soap in warm water

dip small pieces of wool into the water

wrap around your fingers a few times 

start to roll the strands into a ball keep adding wet wool and adding on until you get the head size you want.  This is the messy process

I forgot to take pictures of how to make the arms but you wet wrap wool around  craft bendable chenille sticks and add it below the head adding wet wool to make a neck as the picture above shows...next bundle the top of the skirt and stitch it through the wool several times to hold it into place

Next add a shirt, this can be done in so many ways but I here I chose to make a wrap over shawl as a top

Now to add hair, simply needle felt on color wool for hair and style it

I chose to make the hair long and turn it into a bun but twisting the long wool and then wrapping it around

Using a needle I felted it securely to the head

Almost done...now to accessorize!

I added a small star ear ring as a brooch to the shawl and flower to her hair

This is the doll my mother made for me and got me interested in learning to make some for myself!  So pretty!