This space is to share fun preschool ideas and activities. I am also passionate about children exploring their outdoor surroundings. Thanks for stopping by to see the latest Adventure with the Kerr's!
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Showing posts with label felt doll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label felt doll. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 31

How to make a felt doll

Materials needed to make a simple felt doll:

  • *felt
  • *needle
  • *felt scrapes or other stuffing material 
  • *embroidery thread

1.) Decide on how big you would like the doll.

 2.) Make your pattern


 3.) Cut out the pieces on your chosen color of felt.


4.) Begin stitching. (I Started with the left arm).


5.) When you are finished with the arms and head then begin to stuff. For my stuffing material I used an old white cloth diaper and the felt scrapes left over from       
              cutting the doll out.


6.) Use a pencil if needed to stuff the arms, feet, or where ever needed.

7.) Once the feet were stitched I began to stuff the body.

8.) All done! It's not perfect but I'm pretty sure my kids won't care.


9.) Our felt doll was going to be Jesus so I made 
long brown hair,  
a beard, 
with smile in the front.




10.) Then added the eyes.

11.) I worked on the clothes before I added the hair in the back... I wasn't quite sure if the long hair would get in the way.

Clothes for felt Jesus Doll

I made a few outfits to correlate with the different events that took place during Jesus' last week.

*The prayer in Gethsemane when Jesus bled
*The purple cloak and crown of thorns
*An outline of the doll with underwear, for when Jesus is nailed to the cross
*A resurrected cloak
*A  general cloak
 
(All the felt I used was the 9x12" ecospun classic felt)



Other materials:
*Tacky glue
*sticky back Velcro
*Good scissors (sadly these kids ones were the best ones I had around)
*The needle and thread was used for the felt doll


1.) I layed the Jesus doll out on the 9x12"piece and made a dot with the scissors to approximate where the arm holes should be. I then approximated how long the cloak (or jacket, that's what my preschooler calls it) should be..right above the feet. 
2.) As you can see it wasn't very pretty, with weird arm hole shapes and an odd place where I cut so that the felt wasn't covering the whole beard. 
*I did learn that you want the top of the cloak in correlation to the arm holes to be small! One of the other reasons there is a funky cut near the right arm hole! 
*Also my arm hole approximations were too big, so for the next one I layed this general cloak pattern on top of the new color felt and made sure the arm holes were closer.

3.) I decided that I wanted the belt to keep the cloak shut. So I cut out a belt shape, wrapped it around the waist, cut off the extra, and then used the sticky velcro. I just needed a small piece of the velcro.


4.) I made little sandals by cutting out a square with the felt and then cutting a small slit in the square. I then used small pieces of velcro, to keep it closed on the back side.


5.) This is what it all looked like. The other sage colored piece is just a loose piece to put over the shoulders.


 The general cloak outfit



The prayer in Gethsemane
(I only had scrapes of red, enough for the belt, and over the shoulders piece. I would have made the whole cloak red if I had enough.)


The crown of thorns was made by cutting out a small rectangle....


finding the middle....


cutting a slit, just like the sandals only this time big enough for the head...


and finally cutting it like a crown.


The crown of thorns and purple cloak


The Jesus doll does not have nail prints in his hands and feet, or a spear wound in his side. So I made a white overlay that we can put on top of the Jesus doll when it is time for him to be on the cross. 


 
I just used the grabby side of the velco to put on the back side of the outline. 
It sticks just fine to the Jesus doll.


How he will look on the cross. 
Except that he will have black marker dots for the 
nail prints and spear wound.
(The overlay doesn't fit perfectly but good enough.)

The overlay with the nail prints and spear wound will be underneath 
the resurrected cloak.
(It's debatable whether or not we will use a cloak over his head.) 

Here is a Tomb I bought from dollar tree to put the Jesus doll in after the Crucifixion. On Sunday morning when the kids go to find Jesus he will not be there, just the cloth. 
Instead Jesus will be in the garden.

*I had a lot of fun making the felt doll with the various outfits to depict the events that take place during Jesus' last week. I hope that this will be a fun family tradition we will do each year to tell the story of Easter.

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