So you’ve made a few “Waldorf inspired” dolls, and now want to dive deeper into the world of fiber art dolls? this might be of help to you!

Back in 2014 I wrote a sort of a guide on how to start your doll making adventure.

Back then I was already making fiber art dolls, but the dolls were still somewhat simpler than they are now. No articulation had been achieved and the needle felting was kept very simple.

Now, a few years later 😂, I want to provide you with a good resource because I constantly receive emails asking me about this. Though the initial blog post still applies, the world has evolved a lot and with it the techniques too.

If you much rather listen or watch a video with some of these points, you can check that one on my YouTube channel: Starting Your Dollmaking Adventure with Natural Fiber Art Dolls.

But first let’s begin with setting some boundaries, as I find this always helps me concentrate information.

What is a natural fiber art doll and what is a waldorf inspired doll?

Is there a difference?

Yes. To my somewhat trained eye, I would say there is a big difference. To you, since you are new to these dolls, you might not see it yet or know the difference between these two styles.

Guide to starting your doll making adventure in natural fiber art dolls, via Fig and Me.

Waldorf inspired dolls are meant and created for children. They are not made for doll collectors. But they are slightly more elaborate than the extremely simple waldorf dolls.

They are inspired by Waldorf dolls in the sense that all natural materials have been used in their creation (no glue, plastic joints, plastic pellets, man-made fibers, etc.); the doll corresponds to the proportions of a human child, wether that is a baby, a toddler or a child of school-age and they are meant as aides for healthy childhood development.

Waldorf inspired dolls are still geared towards children, so their clothing is simple for them to be able to dress them by themselves. Think of wide sleeves and legs in pants. Buttonholes and snaps are good, so that kids can practice small finger control.

In most countries gearing dolls for children means that you must pass testing requirements so you can legally sell them. I will try to go into more detail on that on a future post.

Normally you will be using natural materials that are meant to withstand to play, to heavy children’s play.

Like wool yarns for hair, or even mohair weft which is very sturdy. But I wouldn’t recommend using alpaca fibers on a Waldorf-inspired doll as these fibers are much too fragile to be handled constantly via children’s play.

The main difference between a Waldorf doll and a Waldorf-inspired doll nowadays, is that you will find the dollmaker needle felted the facial features or even the body.

These features can be kept very simple, but traditionally, Waldorf dolls are only sculpted using a regular dollmaking needle and thread.

Waldorf inspired dolls then sport the addition of more shape to the face using needle felting techniques.

What is then a natural fiber art doll?

These dolls are geared to collectors. They can be made for children of course, but they are not geared for them.

They are usually mementos, or special dolls given to young ones on special occasions.

My dolls are meant for play, that means all clothing is removable and washable. They can be dressed, hair can be styled, they can be spot cleaned. But my dolls are normally played with by adults.

A natural fiber art doll, geared towards collectors then, has more elaborate clothing, you can use artificial fibers (though I do try to stay away from them as much as possible…to keep in tune with the “natural” part).

They can also be an entire wool sculpture over an armature for those collectors that love to pose and photograph their dolls.

Natural fiber art dolls have a lot of expression and realism on their faces, and usually their bodies are made to match these more realistic faces. The body is no longer a simple torso, but has a lot of contour, so the legs and arms.

Their clothing is highly functional and removable, but it usually requires adult hands to be maneuvered.

Natural fiber art dolls have amazing doll hair. Anything from Suri Alpaca, Leicester, Wensleydale, Teeswater, Mohair, Yak, Camel, Cotswold, Blue Faced Leicester, etc.

They have very expressive or extremely realistic eyes.

They usually have some sort of body movement, wether that is through fabric joints, plastic joints, inner armatures or articulated body parts.

They are extremely time consuming to create and are not beginner friendly.

It takes many, many dolls and a couple of years to get enough skill and experience in needle felting, plus sewing and pattern design, to be able to create a unique and beautiful natural fiber art doll.

Extreme attention to detail is required and unbelievable amounts of patience.

Just for an idea, it takes me 10 to 12 hours to needle felt and cover a full head for one of my larger dolls. That’s just the head.

That’s not embroidering the eyes, making hair, adding ears or making the entire doll. I still have to make all the clothing, my favourite part!

I am not trying to dissuade you, because truth be told, this style of dollmaking is absolutely gratifying, but it is an arduous journey and you best be prepared to play the long game.

Every time you turn a corner, something new comes your way.

You learn how to needle felt pretty lips, and now you feel you need to add more realism to the nose.

You are finally satisfied with the face, but then the hands look silly now…or the legs…or the clothes.

It’s an uphill battle, with the dolls beckoning you. Enticing you always to sit just a little bit longer and work just a little bit harder.

It is highly addicting and you need to exercise clear boundaries between your personal life and your doll making life.

This is not always possible when your heart is racing a mile a minute because you just discovered a new face under all the wool.

Why Needle Felting? Why Wool?

Well, since the vast majority of dollmakers creating these dolls started their making journey first with Waldorf dolls, then Waldorf-inspired and have now moved on to natural fiber art dolls, most of us have kept using the same materials and evolved through our techniques.

Wool is an amazing sustainable and renewable natural product. It has so many properties that man-made fiber fill doesn’t.

The main feature for me is that it will biodegrade, given the right circumstances.

Using wool as main ingredient means you can felt it using specialty barbed needles.

That’s how the fun begun in the first place. Poke a little bit here, and a little bit there, spend a few hours in delicious felting pleasure and now you have a pout and pudgy cheeks smiling at you.

Some people are afraid to use wool, as that means you cannot throw the doll in the washing machine, especially when making Waldorf dolls or Waldorf-Inspired dolls.

But I dare ask you: why would you throw a handmade doll that is such a dear friend to your child, why would you throw it in the washing machine?

To me it is such an aggressive method to clean a doll and believe me, my children took and played with their dolls everywhere. I only needed to regularly spot-clean and wash the dolls once a year (maybe twice if we had gone camping a lot).

If you want to check out a quick video on how I wash normal waldorf dolls, even my daughter’s 18” tall dolls, you can check out this video.

Of course, natural fiber art dolls are not meant to be submerged and cleaned like regular waldorf dolls.

This is due to the thick needle felted layers, the fibers used for their hair, and any joints or added weight used in their creation.

Now that you know the difference between Waldorf dolls, Waldorf-Inspired dolls and Natural Fiber Art Dolls, let us proceed as how you go about making the last of these three styles.

1. Design

Natural fiber art dolls normally represent children, but of course you can choose to make teenagers, babies, adults, people of more mature age.

Natural fiber art doll is a term used to convey the techniques & materials used as well as the geared customer.

However, the term started being used by dollmakers who were making Waldorf-Inspired dolls and needed or wanted to differentiate them from Waldorf-Inspired dolls in the sense that the dolls were not really meant for children.

The first dollmaker who started using that term was Meghan McInnis from Mon Petit Frere.

So, your first task is to decide on the pattern and design of your doll.

You must think first of the age your doll is to represent, then the height and create a pattern with the proportions you need, in the package you need it delivered.

For a thorough blog post talking about doll sizes, doll body proportions and head sizes, you can look to this article on my blog.

This is most obvious if you pay attention to doll design.

A lot of dollmakers create ginormeous heads with tiny torsos and ultra long legs; or tiny bodies, or disproportionately short limbs…do not worry, I have made all of these mistakes myself.

Sometimes these are not actual mistakes, but very intentional design choices of the dollmaker in question.

They want to accentuate or draw attention to a feature, so it is then exaggerated on purpose, or minimized.

There is also a very technical term we like to use: we want to make it cute!

I choose not to create caricatures of humans, I strive to provide my dolls with some semblance of realistic proportions, without getting into the weeds and being too perfectionist.

The truth is I am not a sculptor or a portrait maker. I am a dollmaker.

I believe you have some leniency with dolls, as you are encouraged to play with them. Especially dolls that are meant to be played with, by adults or by children.

So of course this means you need to think about what you are doing. But, if I may be so bold as to give you advice: think and make.

Don’t spend all the time just thinking. Get making and effecting the changes you think you need to create a better looking doll to your eyes.

Study, draw, sew, draft, stuff, get going. You can really spend too much time figuring things out on paper and there is always some sort of magic and chaos that happens when bringing things to the fabric and wool process.

Get real experience behind you. It will be longer lasting than reading or watching tons of videos or screen shots of dolls. I promise.

2. Doll Mobility

Now, since natural fiber art dolls are somewhat geared towards collectors that like to play with them and photograph them, normally the dolls have some sort of body movement.

Think of heads that can be turned and tilted, arms that can bend or hold poses, legs that can hold the doll upright and knees that can bend.

This adds incredibly play value to your doll but it does make things a lot more complicated.

There are so many ways to add movement capabilities to your doll, from an inner armature, ball joints, plastic disc joints, button joints, etc.

This is where the design and the techniques you use to create your doll will be of the utmost importance.

To me, for example, it’s important my dolls look proportional and pretty without clothing, but that’s not a priority for every dollmaker.

Each of us has to make decisions when following certain wishes and it’s all part of the fun of making dolls: figuring things out. Seeing what your doll needs, what your heart tells you and going after that, solving problems along the way!

Experimenting with doll mobility has been a journey of a few years for me and extremely fun.

I have documented some of my thoughts on doll mobility via these blog posts and perhaps they will give you ideas on what to try or how to achieve some doll movement on your own dolls:

1. Exploring a bendable knee without a joint.
2. Dolls with a moveable head.
3. Making a doll with an inner armature.
4. Perfecting the bendable knee and knee movement.

3. Skills

Now what skills should you concentrate on as you start your art doll adventure?

There are so many skills that go into dollmaking, that is very hard to give priority to one over the other, as you will definitely need many of them at a good-enough level, in order to create a well made doll.

Let’s enumerate, as maybe you’re already versed in some of them:

Sewing by hand, sewing by machine, embroidery, stuffing, pattern design, clothing design, hair, shoe making, knitting, crochet, photography, sculpting, storytelling.

And the list goes on 😬…

4. Learning

Now that you know the difference between these styles and perhaps you even know which are the areas you would like to concentrate your efforts, you can decide how to proceed.

Learning in person is a great way to feel the materials under your hands and under the guidance of an experienced teacher.

Not always possible of course, but highly recommended. If you want to learn directly how to make natural fiber art dolls, there are several to my knowledge:
Petit Gosset, holds workshops in the US.
Maria’s Nature Toys, holds workshops in Germany.
Fig & Me, I hold workshops all over the place.

If you want to learn to make Waldorf-inspired dolls, which I highly recommend to start with before you add more techniques and design details, you can learn from these talented teachers:
Mon Pilou, holds workshops in Amsterdam.
Ildila, holds workshops in the UK.
Lalinda, holds workshops in Poland.

If learning in person is not suitable for you, some of these teachers also hold online classes:
Petit Gosset, holds online live workshops on dress design
Lavender and Lark, holds online classes for many fiber art pieces and miniature dolls
Fig & Me, you can check out my schedule over here.

There’s also now many dollmakers publishing dollmaking ebooks, qualities and style varies of course, but here are some to get you started:
Mariengold, waldorf dolls
Petit Amsterdam, waldorf dolls
Mon Pilou, waldorf-inspired dolls
Ildila, waldorf inspired dolls
Fig & Me, waldorf inspired dollmaking e-books
Loulabee, natural fiber art dolls
North Coast Dolls, natural fiber art dolls
Apalipalka, waldorf dolls
Taisoid, waldorf dolls

Materials

For materials to create these dolls, I have written an extensive post with the vast majority of the tools and materials I use, you can check it out and compare to what you already have in your dollmaking cupboard.

The article comes with a pdf with links to all suppliers too, so you can source from an online retailer closest to you.

So that’s that. I hope this helps you figure out which style of doll you are most drawn to, and which techniques you want to apply in the creation of your doll.

There’s a vast world out there ready to be explored, all you need are scissors, needles and determination.

I hope you conquer any pitfalls along the way and that you become the dollmaker who you’ve always wanted to be.

Just a few more tips. I try to concentrate all my dollmaking-related posts in one page, you can check it out via my Dollmaking Resources.

I also share a lot of techniques, behind the scenes in my doll studio and publish tutorials via my Patreon channel, which works as a monthly membership. Feel free to sign up via the tier of your choice and cancel your membership any time, no questions asked. If life gets busy or the finances strained you can take a break and come back later when you have more time to dive deeper again.

As we like to say over here: may the wool and cloth be always in your favour 😘.