Mermaiden Doll

I like fins...

This sweet little mermaid doll is from a fabulous book called Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love by Hillary Lang. It's another one of those books that would be nice to look at even if you never made anything from it. However, on the principle that I should get value from my book purchases, I tried to pick-out an easy-ish dolly to start me off.

The mermaiden is made up of three basic bits: the body, the fins and the hair. All are sewn using a technique I'd never used before. Rather than cutting out the pattern piece and then sewing it with a seam allowance, you draw the pattern onto the fabric, stitch it and then cut it out to the seam allowance. I actually found this quite a good way of doing it as the pieces are quite small (the doll is only about 7" tall) and I could follow the drawn line with my needle on the sewing machine.

The body is made from plain cream fabric, the hair from baby pink corduroy and the fins from printed cotton. I don't think I made a brilliant job of embroidering mermaiden's face - it looks a bit, um, dented, which the book did warn about.

For the hair and the fins, you were supposed to free-motion quilt over two pieces of fabric to give a textured effect. I drew my lines in first with a trick marker, but I think they still look at bit jagged rather than smooth curves. I think I need more practise.

Assembling mermaiden was very straightfroward. You just pop some stuffing into the bottom of the fin and then sew her into it. Her hair is just pulled down over her head and stitched in place.

The patterm called for a ric rac ribbon hair decoration, but rather lazily I picked out a glittery star embellishment from my stash and glued it on. I say I, in fact my husband chose it from a selection I showed him. Nice choice though.

As mermaiden is quite a flat doll, I decided to hang her for display purposes (in the nicest possible way). I attached a small pieced of glittery pink ribbon to her head and now she's dangling from the wall in my study.

I have to say that one of best things about mermaiden is her lack of legs. I always find legs on dolls and toys difficult - they are either too spindly to turn after sewing or I end up sandwiching them the wrong way round, so here's to fins!

Melx