Need a hand with that?

Hi doll makers! Do you sometimes wish you had a magic wand that could help you sew those intricate doll hands and fingers? It's not really hard to sew yourself, but you have to go slow and pay really close attention. Oh - I sure hate doing it because I can't have one eye on the old movie channel and accurately sew those tiny fingers too!

Well, rest assured you CAN get out a magic wand of sorts to do all the work of sewing doll hands for you!

TA DA - your embroidery machine can become that helpful sewing room companion that will whip up a pair of doll hands in 3 minutes flat! I can hear you grumbling out there....."oh sure, how do you do that"?

It's just a matter of scanning in the doll pattern, cleaning up the "artwork", setting the stitch length to very small, and then loading it into your machine. (trust me, that is the hardest part).




Here's the saved file from the first time I did it, and I keep it in one of the memory pockets on my machine. You can see the shape of the hands and arms that the machine will sew. I need to use matching thread because these arms will be used on a doll that doesn't get painted limbs, so we don't want an odd color thread showing.

Once you have the design ready, hoop the doll body fabric, load the hoop into your machine, check for alignment, and press GO! At the end of this post is a video I took, but am so sorry - it's sideways and I can't seem to rotate it. Maybe some one can comment and tell me how.

This set of hands is for the doll bee tomorrow, so that I can show a dollmaker how to turn those tiny fingers with tiny turning tubes, or just a coffee stirrer straw and a tooth pick. The tiny tubes that come on the tiny paint brushes can work for a finger turner too. If you'd like to watch, we'd be glad to have you join us at the bee.

For more info about Gail Wilson's NY doll - please click on the title of this post, it will take you to her website page for historical dolls - just page down a ways to the NEW YORK DOLL.

Thanks for visiting and have some doll fun this week! Julie

And here is the finished doll from several years ago - with the embroidered hands.