Hansel and Gretel, Part 2: Making the Heads

In the next installment of my Beginner Dollmaking series I am sharing with you how to roll firm and smooth balls of wool to create doll heads, inspired in the beautiful waldorf tradition of dollmaking.

Hansel and Gretel Dollmaking series, via fig&me

As I promised to you in my last post regarding this dollmaking series, (in that post I shared a video with all the materials necessary to create the dolls), here is the video where I share with you how to create Hansel and Gretel’s doll heads.

We are starting by creating very firm balls of wool, by wrapping thin strips of wool batting and forming the inner core.

Then we cover with a generous square of wool that will give us enough “fluffy” wool to sculpt the doll’s face and head shape.

We then cover the whole thing with a pre-sewn stockinette cover and we proceed to sculpt both the head and the spine/torso of our dolls.

It is very important that we create an extremely firm core for the inner head, and that our doll’s heads are not squishy. This will keep your doll looking good for many years to come. I should know, I have been using this method for many years and the dolls I made for my kids are still standing strong.

Now, this is a lengthy video and if you think watching 29 minutes or so of making two dolls’ heads is a bit too long for you to deal with, try recording it, backing up all the videos, editing it which took 8 hours yesterday (poor Florence, I didn’t get to work on her clothes the entire day!), then exporting it, loading it to YouTube (that took 45 minutes exporting, and 45 minutes loading and processing)…then spend another 45 minutes writing the closed captions!

In all honesty, I didn’t think this “sharing” adventure was going to start with this strong involvement in the editing arena. Lord knows I should know better. I produce monthly tutorials for Patreon and I have made other videos for my YouTube channel as well, but somehow knowing before hand what that entails went down the drain and I thought this was going to be a cute detour.

What have I gotten myself into?

At this rate I am going to spend an entire day every week just editing and posting the next video for you guys. Not a nightmare at all because I am enjoying working on these little dolls for my niece, but certainly not what I anticipated.

We shall keep bright spirits and instead of dwelling on biting too much, I should instead look at the beautiful dolly heads I have created and that fun that will ensue making them (even if posting the videos is going to ruin my bum!).

Sculpting the doll heads for Hansel and Gretel, dollmaking series by fig&me

Now, if you too are working on your very own set of Hansel and Gretel and would like me to see what you’re up to, please use the hashtag “hanselandgretelwithfigandme” on instagram so I can see your makes! At the moment I am the only one using it, but hope that as time goes by and we move forward in the creation of these little dolls, that others start sharing as well.

Now I simply must get off my bum and go put a few hours on Florence’s outfit, so she doesn’t get too cross with me. Thank you for coming to read this and if you have questions or you are also tagging along, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

As they say, to be continued.

Making a set of dolls inspired by Hansel and Gretel, via fig&me