Just something I picked up

Bear with me here, this is not just another Dolly Donations post, though these unfinished dolls are for the orphans in Haiti. This is a little something I figured out when I was making my still unfinished vampire doll.

You see, shoving those fairly firmly stuffed, gangly limbs into what was definitely not a very large doll body sucked. I wish I knew of a less crude word that truly describes that experience, but that one just seems to fit. Anyway, I finished with her and found that after all of the straining to get everything right, both of the legs and one arm still ended up pulling away and not getting caught in the seams...not completely.

That's when the idea struck to not stuff the limbs! Wow! I cannot believe that it took me so much pulling and fighting with my sewing machine to realize the way things should be done. Now, doing it this way does require more hand sewing, which I know a lot of people despise, but I find it way less irritating than wasting my effort on a technique that doesn't always work.



So here's what you do, leave a small opening in the underside of the arm (or leg), similar to what you would leave for turning out a project. Simple, right? You can keep everything nice and flat while you're sewing, and when you're done you have just a tiny hole to put your stuffing through and sew up by hand. Leaving the opening on the underside of the limb means that your stitching is well hidden and you still get the polished look of machine sewing without all of the struggle! I can't see a reason to ever follow pattern directions again!