To make your own peg dolls you will need:* Wooden pegs, unpainted, unvarnished (available from craft stores)
* Acrylic paints (I used Jo Sonjas)
* Wood varnish (I used a satin coating)
* 12 inch (30cm) chenille sticks, various colours
* Yarn or wool felt for clothing.
* Pigma pens (optional)
* Craft glue
The first step is to paint your pegs, as you can see I mixed up a variety of pinks, browns and whites for the skin colour. Wait until the first coat is completely dry before painting again. Once again, allow to dry.
Now paint the legs, from the centre slit down to the tips. Allow each coat to dry before doing the next. You can make the legs spotty, stripey, plain, whatever you like. Then paint the tips with a darker colour for the shoes (I used black). Paint on hair in different styles. You can paint on the face if you have a fine paintbrush, but I drew mine on with Pigma pens. A word of warning – the varnish seems to smear the pen, so avoid varnishing the face, or leave to dry for 48 hours first (I don’t like to wait!)
When completely dry, coat the pegs with varnish and stand to dry. Coat again. You can use either a matt, satin or gloss varnish depending on the effect you want. Allow to completely dry.
Push a chenille stick to the top of the split in the peg. It should have fairly equal amounts on each side, but you can trim them later so don’t worry too much.
Taking the chenille stick from the front, wrap it around the body of the doll twice, winding up towards the head. The last wrap should go around the back of the head and stick out at a 90 degree angle to the doll. You can see I’ve also bent the other stick at an angle so it doesn’t get caught in the first wrapping.
Now take the chenille stick from the back and wind in the opposite direction, around the body twice again, and around the back of the neck as before. Trim the arms if they are not equal or readjust your winding.
Put a small dob of craft glue at the back, just underneath where the arms cross. This is not essential, but helps to hold them in place.
Now for the clothing. To make a knitted dress: Cast on 12 stitches (4 ply) on size 4 needles. Garter stitch (you can do stockinette stitch if you prefer) until the dress is the length you want, I think one of mine was 10 rows for a short dress, 15 for a longer one. Cast off. Wrap the dress around the doll, letting the arms stick through. Sew up at the back.
For a wool felt dress: Cut a piece of wool felt 2.5 inches x 3 inches. Holding this up to the doll, mark where you want the arms to come through. Make holes on the marked places with a seam ripper or metal skewer. Pull the arms through, wrap dress around and sew up at the back. There are lots of little embellishments you can do to make really pretty little dresses.
Another idea is to wrap the arms with embroidery floss, I might do that next time.
Now, I think every pretty girl needs a place to rest her head, watch this space for the next installment!
P.S. I would appreciate any suggestions for improvements for this tute, or any errors. Thanks!
