How to Hand Embroider a Simple Doll Face
If you’re making a soft rag doll and are hung up on how to hand embroider the doll’s face, or even if you just need a quick run down on basic stitches, I hope this super simple video embroidery tutorial is helpful for you!
When designing my Phoebe rag doll patterns, it was important to me that the elements be accessible to beginners and even kids. I didn’t want any one element to frustrate someone new, which is why I also created the complete video walkthrough for that project.
Even though the new Clara Ballerina Doll has some more intermediate techniques for sewing, I didn’t see any reason for making more complicated faces. The original rag doll face concepts were just too cute! I am not making a complete video sew along for this pattern, BUT I am creating a playlist of short videos for those more intricate techniques, starting with how to embroider the doll’s face.
Super Simple Hand Embroidered Doll Faces: A Video Tutorial
I am not an embroidery perfectionist, but I have learned to hand embroider decently and the above video tutorial will show you how to separate your embroidery floss (without tangles!), how to thread the needle, knot the thread, and of course how to create the basic hand embroidery stitches you need to stitch the doll’s eyes, nose, brows, and mouth.
These tips are great for any doll face! But if you’d like to buy my newest pattern, the Clara Ballerina Doll, you can find that in my shop or on Etsy if you prefer. She comes with all the essential dance clothes, of course!
Tools for Basic Embroidery
One great thing about embroidery is that it’s very inexpensive to get started! For the dolls’ faces, you don’t need an embroidery hoop, but if you’re getting into embroidery as a hobby, you’ll want to grab a few hoops, and I recommend the nicer plastic embroidery hoops. You can reuse them, of course, so these are a one time purchase and they’re not pricey at all. Plus they come in pretty colors! If you want to use the hoop as a frame and hang your pieces on the wall, you can opt for the cheaper, but super cute bamboo kind for that.
Embroidery floss is cheap too, just cents per color, so you can build up your collection and only spend a few bucks. You’ll want to transfer the floss to embroidery floss bobbins to prevent the headache of tangled masses of floss as you use them. I know it’s a pain, but do it while you’re watching TV. Then you’ll need a holder for all your gorgeous floss in rainbow order!
As for needles, you can just buy embroidery needles, or use whatever needle you have on hand with a large enough eye for you to get the floss through.
And if you’re eager to try more embroidery …
If you’re on Instagram or Pinterest, I’m sure you’ve seen what amazing things can be done with hand embroidery! People are so very creative and make the most beautiful pieces. I find hand embroidery so relaxing and it’s a great project to take on the road when traveling, assuming you can’t bring your sewing machine, ha!
Here are a few incredible embroidery patterns and kits on Etsy for you to try out:
Hand embroidery is really quite simple and can be very therapeutic, so I hope you’ll give it a try!
Those fancy pieces are really made of the basic embroidery stitches, they’re just being used in different and creative ways. Similar to crochet, once you know the 4 or 5 stitches, you can pretty much make any pattern! The Phoebe and Clara dolls’ faces use three basic stitches: French knots for the eyes, a satin stitch to fill in the nose, and a basic backstitch for the rest. Super easy!
Next on the doll sewing playlist will be how to attach the moveable button jointed arms on the Clara Ballerina Doll. Stay tuned for that tutorial and until then,
Happy Stitching!
Nikki
