A Little Vampire Doll

My daughter loves the Amelia Fang book series by Laura Ellen Anderson, and she's often asked for dolls or toys of the characters. However there aren't any commercially available. Anderson recently released the final book in the series which we bought for H as a birthday present - and I decided to make her an Amelia doll to go alongside the gift!

I found this pattern from PetrasWonderland on Etsy which I used as the base. To make my life a little easier, I used black fabric for the body and arms, and striped black and white fabric for the legs (rather than make them in skin tones and then 'dress' the doll separately). That way the only clothing I needed to sew was a circle skirt, which I then sewed to the body. I added some netting in between the circle skirt fabric to get the sense of fullness found in the illustrations. Finally I added some little wings from stiff black felt.

Amelia wouldn't be complete without her little pumpkin Squashy, so I used some scrap orange fabric to make him, complete with monocle and top-hat as seen in some end-plate illustrations. This is the version of Squashy that H thinks is cutest!

Was I 100% happy with the doll ... no, of course not! I was stumped as to how to make the fly-away strands of hair featured in the illustrations, so to me doll Amelia's hair is too smooth. I couldn't think of a way to make the stiff over-skirt (which looks like spiky black lines in the illustrations) and I was a little annoyed that I didn't get the white panel on the front of her torso.

But I nit-pick. I have never made a doll before so really it was pleasing that it turned out well and is recognisably Amelia. H was thrilled with it and it also earned the thumbs-up from Amelia's creator:

Now, do I order some fluffy fleece and attempt Amelia's best friend, Florence the rare breed of Yeti.....?

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Confined Crafting

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