Felt Dolls – Perfect for Travel

A number of years ago, EK Success had a set of templates called “Tracerkins.”  They were meant for making little paper dolls for use in scrapbooks.  But I liked the idea of making some permanent “paper dolls,” so I made a set out of felt.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, EK Success isn’t producing these templates anymore.  But you can still find them on ebay.

About 8 years later, these are still going strong.   (Although my kids seem to have misplaced most of the pieces, as you’ll see in my photos.  They’re around here somewhere.) My daughters usually play with them around the house, but they’re good for travel, or even for times when the kids have to sit quietly during a class or something, because they’re self-contained and not noisy.

Making the Dolls

It’s not complicated to make the dolls.  You’ll need to gather your supplies:

• assorted colors of craft felt including skin & hair colors
• Tracerkins templates
• 1″ ring binder
• 3 pencil pouches for use in a ring binder (I prefer the ones with vinyl windows.)
• permanent marker
• sharp scissors  (Fiskars kids’ scissors have always sufficed for us.  Even on felt.)

Trace your pieces onto the felt and cut them out.  I made an assortment, but I stuck with mostly the simpler shapes and styles.  I didn’t try to cut out the spiky hair or anything like that.  And I didn’t draw the faces on; we just left them blank.

Store the pieces in the pencil pouches in the binder.  I marked ours so the kids would know what went in which pocket:

My original plan was to cover the binder itself with flannel, so the pieces would stick to the binder like a flannelboard.  But I honestly just never got around to it.  Around the house, it’s not a big deal.  If you want it for travel, you might find that more important.  (Or you could maybe just adhere a piece of sticky-backed felt to the inner or outer cover of the binder.  That would be a simple, non-sew way to go about it.)

Tips:

• Make sure you have skin tones & hair colors available in your felt assortment!
• This is a great project to plan on when felt goes on sale at the local craft store.
• Check for the pencil cases at Back-to-School time.