Sewing | Heavenly Homestead

I finally got the sewing machine moved in to my craft room (yay!) and wanted a quick project to make to celebrate. I found this adorable fabric softie doll from Little Green Notebook‘s blog, which she based on a pattern on Martha Stewart‘s website.

The pattern needs to be printed at least 150% of the original size to be a good size doll. My printer would only print a portion of the pattern, which was the head and a portion of the body. I used that portion to redraw the arms, legs, and hair by hand. It wasn’t difficult and saved a trip to the printer/copier store.

Materials I used:

scraps of fabrics in pinks and greens, plus a flesh color (I used off-white)
craft felt in a light brown/blonde color
DMC embroidery thread in lt pink and lt blue
Basic sewing materials such as thread and needle for hand sewing and machine sewing
Worsted Weight yarn in hot pink
3.5 mm crochet hook

I followed the tutorial listed on Martha’s website, then made a fabric hair bow and a crochet heart to embellish her. For the fabric bow, I used the basic concept of this pattern from Simply Homemade except I reduced the rectangular fabric cut to 8″ by 5″ to make a slightly smaller bow. It was a very easy and simple bow to make. I may make another one in the full-size version for our little girl and attach it to a clip or headband to match her baby doll’s hair bow.

For the crochet heart, I used the hot pink WW yarn and the 3.5 mm crochet hook. You can use a size or two larger hook if you wish to make the heart a little larger. I didn’t want the heart on the softie to be too much on the striped floral print fabric for her body.

Basic Crochet Heart Pattern: This is a pattern I found a while back and it does not have an author to credit. It’s a pretty basic design and has been around for next to forever as far as I can tell.

Working into a Magic Circle, Ch 2.

Into the Magic Circle work 4 dc, 1 trb, 4 dc, ch 2, sl st. Do not join.

Tuck the tail into the center of the magic circle and pull tight to close the circle.

Fasten off and weave in the ends.

If you can’t crochet, you can knit a heart or cut a heart from felt and hand stitch it to your softie doll. There are several more applique ideas to add to your softie available, including first initial, strawberries, cherries, puppy dogs… you name it. Just search for freebies online.

For her embroidered face, I used DMC embroidery thread in a light pink and a light blue. You’ll only need a little bit, so you can also use sewing thread or even paint on her face. I didn’t use any paint to do a blush on her cheeks as pictured on other similar softie dolls, but you can add blush to your doll easy with a touch of peach or pink paint.

Stitching felt onto fabric can be a real bear when using a sewing machine. I used a basting stitch to tack it down around the edges of the face and around the hair line before doing a basic zig-zag stitch at the hair line. You can leave it just basted on, use a decorative stitch on your machine, or hand stitch the hair applique to the face.