When I was a little girl, my Dad brought home four angels and a two clowns to put on our Christmas tree. A lady he worked with had made them basically out of yarn and a few other materials. As I put them on my tree this year, something made me take a closer look. I decided that I would love to make some yarn dolls for myself so I sought out a tutorial. After coming across a few sites with yarn doll instructions, I found a set written by Diane Gilleland on www.CraftStylish.com.  She gives step-by-step instructions plus provides excellent pictures to make it really easy to follow along.

Here are a few additional tips that I jotted down while making my first two dolls.  They will make a lot more sense after you read Diane’s complete instructions:

• Thread the piece of tying yarn through your wrapped yarn before removing from the card.  Tying it first and then removing it made it a lot easier on me to keep all of the yarn together.
• Diane suggests wrapping the hair yarn around the card 14 times.  I did this on my first doll and the hair was a lot sparser than I would have liked.  On the second doll, I wrapped it 28 times and achieved the desire fullness.  The number of times you wrap for the hair really depends on how thick your yarn is.
• If you want to braid the hair or style it in any other way, wrap the yarn around the 6 inch length of the card instead of the 4 inch length and cut off any extra you don’t need after styling.  I found the hair a bit too short to style otherwise.
• Use multi-colored yarn for a really cute effect on the doll’s body.  Again, be aware of how thick your yarn is.  My dolls turned out quite a bit thinner than Diane’s (which is perfectly okay) because my yarn was thinner.

The doll on the left was my first attempt.  I was happy enough with the result but the hair was far too thin.  I also used glue to affix all of her clothing.  The doll on the right is better constructed.  After I got the hang of it on the first one, the second one went a lot smoother.  I also made her hair thicker and hand stitched all of the clothing onto the doll to make her a bit more durable.  I used bits and pieces I already had to decorate my dolls.  I had to buy a skein of yarn because I don’t normally do crafts that require it.  I think I will hit up my Aunt Sallie for some extra yarn to make more dolls.  I can’t wait to make a few boy ones and my daughter has requested that I make some fairies.  I am thinking some glitter yarn and some gossamer wings will fit the bill.

This would be a great project to do with a Brownie troop or a Girl Scout troop.  You could have the girls decorate them to look like themselves.  For Brownies, light brown yarn for the dress with dark brown clothing, a brown beret and orange accents.  For the Girl Scouts, deck them out in green and white.