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Make Your Own Animal Friends: 10 Cute Cloth Dolls to Sew, Dress Up and Personalize
Discover how to sew your own charming cloth animal dolls with this beautiful book.
Doll-making can be simple and spontaneous, or it can be very detailed and even, to be honest, sort of fiddly. There are endless approaches to doll-making, from the basic to the complicated, each with its own joys and challenges.
This book will walk you through the first steps from imagining a design to showing you how to add personality to your animal characters. Featuring patterns for a bunny rabbit, owl, cat, dog, bear, monkey, fox, kitten, and mouse – stitch up your own menagerie of fabric friends to gift or keep. The projects range in difficulty, allowing you to build on your skills as your progress through the pages of this book. Mix-and-match designs to personalise your you own dolls and create a basic wardrobe with simple, cute clothing patterns to sew and accessorise your makes.
Doll-maker and designer, Katia Ferris provide expert guidance, helping you to sew confidently from scratch. Packed with stunning lifestyle photography and step-by-step illustrations, this book covers everything you need to bring your own animal characters to life.
Doll-making can be simple and spontaneous, or it can be very detailed and even, to be honest, sort of fiddly. There are endless approaches to doll-making, from the basic to the complicated, each with its own joys and challenges.
This book will walk you through the first steps from imagining a design to showing you how to add personality to your animal characters. Featuring patterns for a bunny rabbit, owl, cat, dog, bear, monkey, fox, kitten, and mouse – stitch up your own menagerie of fabric friends to gift or keep. The projects range in difficulty, allowing you to build on your skills as your progress through the pages of this book. Mix-and-match designs to personalise your you own dolls and create a basic wardrobe with simple, cute clothing patterns to sew and accessorise your makes.
Doll-maker and designer, Katia Ferris provide expert guidance, helping you to sew confidently from scratch. Packed with stunning lifestyle photography and step-by-step illustrations, this book covers everything you need to bring your own animal characters to life.
- GenresNonfiction
160 pages, Paperback
Published September 30, 2025
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 11, 2025
Huge fan! A beautiful book, generous sharing of designs and techniques, including honest input: "this is commonly done but I'm always nervous about this technique" (no knots with embroidery details.)
Great for children and adults, anyone who appreciates handwork or wants to learn. Recommend looking at this with young doll fans, to share understanding of the quality, delicacy, cleverness, work involved in creating the dolls they already have.
Every instruction, every stitch, is clearly labeled, so (for example) a reader with embroidery experience can simply skim the names of stitches, and spend more time on instructions for new skills. Interested in Doll Designing? Jump to it.
IMO this book is intended as art appreciation. For useful instruction, the photos should include at least one example of each of the intermediate steps. Techniques vary among even experienced artists, and people attempting this work will be highly visual and tactile.
Why not SHOW exactly how the pattern piece should be placed relative to the weave, show exactly where the scissors should cut relative to an outline? Commercial patterns print on the piece how to place it relative to the bias, but these pieces are too small for that. So why not SHOW it?
A few words embedded in the text are not nearly as helpful for this work. For example, should the pattern 'dots' be pinned together or basted for these projects? If pinned, should the pins be vertical, horizontal, or at an angle to the edge? If basted, would the author use a contrasting color for easy removal, or a like color and left in place?
Its understandable that an expert might not realize this lack, but wouldn't the editor point it out?
Great for children and adults, anyone who appreciates handwork or wants to learn. Recommend looking at this with young doll fans, to share understanding of the quality, delicacy, cleverness, work involved in creating the dolls they already have.
Every instruction, every stitch, is clearly labeled, so (for example) a reader with embroidery experience can simply skim the names of stitches, and spend more time on instructions for new skills. Interested in Doll Designing? Jump to it.
IMO this book is intended as art appreciation. For useful instruction, the photos should include at least one example of each of the intermediate steps. Techniques vary among even experienced artists, and people attempting this work will be highly visual and tactile.
Why not SHOW exactly how the pattern piece should be placed relative to the weave, show exactly where the scissors should cut relative to an outline? Commercial patterns print on the piece how to place it relative to the bias, but these pieces are too small for that. So why not SHOW it?
A few words embedded in the text are not nearly as helpful for this work. For example, should the pattern 'dots' be pinned together or basted for these projects? If pinned, should the pins be vertical, horizontal, or at an angle to the edge? If basted, would the author use a contrasting color for easy removal, or a like color and left in place?
Its understandable that an expert might not realize this lack, but wouldn't the editor point it out?
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January 21, 2026Gorgeous books with beautiful patterns. I love Katia Ferris's style of dolls, and she does amazing Creativebug classes as well, if you have the access. I knew I would love this book!
Absolutely buying a copy!
Absolutely buying a copy!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews