Clothespin Doll Tutorial

A lot of people find this site by searching for "clothespin dolls," and I started to feel sort of bad that I didn't have more practical information for them once they got here. (As an aside, if you have a blog, do you ever find yourself influenced by the search terms that bring people to your site? I can't, or won't, do much for those searching for "transparent leotards," but I sometimes feel I should at least have included a basic recipe for all those desperately looking for the perfect "carrucho" dish.)

It's pretty easy to figure out how to make a clothespin doll on your own, and one of the neat things about them is how many different ways you can go with the same foundation materials. But there are a few tricks I've learned along the way to get the best results, so here it is: my process for making clothespin dolls, along with more musings on the art of the clothespin doll than seems reasonable for something so small and uncomplicated. Be careful what you search for!

Materials:
- Round wooden slotted clothespins
- Craft glue (I am loyal to Elmer's)
- Scissors
- Yarn or embroidery floss
- Paint and fine brushes, or fine-tipped markers
- Lightweight fabric
- Felt

Clothespins: There are lots of types of clothespins out there, but unless you're making an alligator, you want the round slotted wooden kind. I prefer the shorter style, though the tall ones can yield appealing results as well.

The quality of new clothespins unfortunately just isn't that good anymore. Even those that are still made from American hardwood are now assembled in China, and you can really see the difference in the product. Compare the clothespin on the right (an old-school model) with the other two in the photo. The new clothespins are crudely carved, the wood lacks the same pleasing grain, and both styles have a weird forked notch at the end of the slot. Be forewarned. I look for vintage clothespins on eBay. If I'd known this supply, so inexpensive and readily available until quite recently, was was going to disappear, I would have stocked up.

You'll also find clothespins marketed as "doll pins" at craft supply stores. These suffer from the same poor wood quality and coarse finishing, and usually have squared-off legs, rather than the tapered "foot" of the traditional shape. This makes it easier to stand them on their own, but I think they look stumpy, kind of like the difference in effect between a nice heel vs. an orthopedic clodhopper. However, you can also buy simple wooden stands along with these craft pins, which are useful for displaying your finished doll.

Hair: I like to glue on the hair before I draw the doll's face. I find it easier to paint in the face after I can see how the hair will frame it. Yarn or embroidery floss are good materials, or you can paint it on if you want a short, sleek look. Four or five strands of yarn are enough to cover the top of the head.

Fill in the back of the head with another four or five shorter strands of yarn (more for finer fibers).


This character is getting bangs for some added personality.


Face: Once the hair has dried, it's time to paint the face (just like getting ready for work in the morning). I think paint yields a more durable and appealing finished product, but marker can be easier to control and is also fine, especially if you're doing this project with kids.

Whether you're using a brush or a pen, you want a fine-tipped point. The tiniest speck of pigment can make a world of difference to the expressions on these minimalist faces - with the slip of a pen, your saintly princess doll can become an evil-browed villainess.

Along the same lines, every girl feels better with a fresh haircut and a touch of mascara, even girls made out of laundry accessories. Whether you're using paint or marker, you want to let the eyes dry before you add anything like lashes or eyeglasses, or the black pigment will bleed.


Clothes: I find when you're working with small scraps of fabric the edges have a tendency to fray, so even though sewing seems theoretically nicer, I glue these garments together. It helps prevent the fraying and also gives the garments a bit of structure, sort of like a whalebone corset.

I prefer not to glue the clothes directly to the doll, because of course the fun of clothes is to have lots of cute outfits. My only exception is when I'm making a doll for a young child, since you know the outfit will disappear in an instant if it's not glued firmly in place (though they'll still probably rip the arms and hair off within five minutes).

If you're choosing a printed fabric, go for something in a small enough scale to translate to the size of the doll. Some fabric stores sell bundles of remnants, which can be a good source of material for multiple small items.

Dress how-to: For a basic A-line dress, you'll need a few scant inches of lightweight fabric, and about two square inches of felt for arms (anyway, that's my solution for the problem of arms). Cut out one strip about an inch wide, and long enough to wrap around the doll's body with a half inch to spare. Cut a wider, longer strip to make the skirt. To help prevent fraying, you can use the selvage of the cloth as the top and bottom edges of the dress, or fold the edge over and iron it. Or just cut out your squares and let the fringe fall where it may - this is a folk art, after all.


Top: Wrap the narrower strip tightly around the doll and glue down the edge, being careful not to get glue on the doll itself or let the glue bleed through the fabric. Let dry. This will be the top of the dress.


Skirt: Dab a little glue along the front of the waist, and wrap the larger piece of cloth around the waist, angling the ends to form a cone shape. Dab a little glue at the sides of the waist and where the flaps of cloth overlap. You can glue the whole piece of fabric down for a wrap-around look (very Diane von Furstenberg), or just lay a line of glue straight down the back of the skirt and trim off the excess fabric after the glue dries. Once everything is dry, trim the skirt to the length you want. An edging of decorative trim can help prevent the hem from fraying.


Arms: When I was a kid, I never bothered with clothespin doll arms. The pipe cleaner arms on clothespin dolls at craft fairs (usually Christmas tree ornaments) always bugged me - they were furry and sharp and not fooling anyone - and I didn't need the dolls to be able to hold anything, anyway. We'd just sort of use our own fingers in place of the missing arms if a given character really needed actual, functional arms. Now as an adult I'm a bit more literal, yet acknowledge that this is still just a small doll made out of a wooden peg, so stiff little "L" shapes of felt are my compromise, doing the job of signifying "arm" without slowing me down too much. Feel free to follow my innovation, or develop one of your own.


Details: Sequins and seed beads make nice buttons, narrow ribbons are good for sashes, and lace and rick rack add a flourish at the neck or hem. I don't worry too much about whether these additions are in perfect scale to the size of the doll, because in general they won't be. I am also fond of layering on lace hem tape for a lingerie look.

Shoes: I find these problematic, and as I used to with arms (and still do with noses), tend to ignore them. Occasionally I will paint on a little goes-with-anything pair of black ballerina flats, but to be honest they look more like hooves. A pair of painted brown button boots can work if your doll is Victorian, or knee-high black ones if she is a dominatrix or a New Yorker, but how comfortable will those be when she wants to hit the beach in July? I have crafted removable black boots out of electrical tape, but they were crudely shaped at best and required powerful imagination to be seen as anything other than stubby black bandages. Because of all this, I say add shoes at your own risk.

Done. And here's the finished result, shoeless, but still dressed up a bit with rick rack trim on her skirt (sewn rather than glued, since the weight of the rick rack is rather heavy) and a purse made from a scrap of Tyrolean jacquard.

Transformed from a dreary clothesline peg into a fabulous girl-about-town, all in just a few simple steps.

Clothespin World

My cousin taught me the fine art of clothespin doll-making when I was six and she was seven. She was visiting us in Chicago (we were city-mouse, country-mouse cousins - I lived in an apartment, she lived on a farm), and brought along a little bag of eight plain wooden clothespins and some scraps of cloth. "We can make dolls out of these," she announced, and I watched intently as she showed me how. As I remember it, we spent all of one day holed up in the back room of the apartment, craft supplies spread all over the olive green wall-to-wall carpet, each making a family of primitive clothespin figures. I think I still have them somewhere, those original prototypes.

Thus followed years of prolific clothespin doll production. My cousin and I replicated the cast of "Little House on the Prairie," developing innovations in yarn "styling" to create different hair effects. She devised ringlets for Nellie Olsen, for example, by holding onto one strand of a piece of yarn and scrunching the rest into a fat worm. Hold an iron just over the yarn on the steam setting, allow to dry, and the finished product, once that central strand is pulled out, results in curls worthy of Cindy Brady. Individual strands pressed flat created a sewing-room version of today's shiny-straight flat-iron look.

I passed on the secrets of the craft to my best friend from school, too, and soon we had a mini-mountain of figures inspired by Mary Norton's "Borrowers" series. The clothespin medium was perfect for that story, which follows the adventures of a race a tiny people who live under the floors and behind the walls. Our story lines quickly branched out from the original books, sort of a childhood version of fan fiction, I suppose, but without all the improbable hook-ups. (We saved that for Barbies.)

A few years ago I was telling a friend about these girlhood games, and she seemed so charmed by the idea I decided to make a doll for her birthday. I liked the finished result so much I took a picture of it, posed in front of a little cardboard market stand from a French children's game. I liked that result even better.


Since then I've been sporadically making more dolls and taking pictures of them in little scenes. I'm startled by how much fun it is, and I do it a little furtively, because, let's face it, I am basically playing dolls. I mean, am I Grown-Up Doll Lady? But the process and the final results are so satisfying, like filming your own little still-life movie, with yourself as the writer, director, location scout, and costumer.

My friend Jess was musing recently about the particular appeal of this kind of photographed 3-D world, and I couldn't agree with her more. The process of putting together these worlds is pure joy. I, too, loved the Rankin-Bass holiday movies, more than any of the other holiday specials, and while I somehow missed out on the naughty world of "The Lonely Doll," I did have a favorite, more upbeat book called "Alfred Goes House Hunting," by Bill Binzen, in which a tiny teddy bear explores the very real outdoors, looking for a summer abode. That one's now out of print, but you can view the first book in the series, "Alfred the Little Bear," on Binzen's web site. This is a scene from that book.


I know I want to do something with this peculiar pursuit, but what it will be is yet to be seen. I've gotten some strident advice that I should make a children's book, or market a series of clothespin dolls, or come up with a kicky name for them ... but none of those approaches feels quite right. In the meantime I'll be making new outfits for my cast of characters and photographing them in the herb garden, and wait to see where they lead me.

Update: Thought I'd link to a few more clothespin pictures on Flickr; these are from a birthday picture book I made for my friend Christina, in which a magic birthday present (a handbag) whisks her and her cat Fritz off on an international adventure.

If you need tips on making your own clothespin dolls, I have a tutorial up here. They are lots of fun: I highly recommend it!

Wedding Clothespins

This weekend I attended a terrific wedding in San Francisco and had the honor of making a pair of bride-and-groom clothespin doll cake toppers modeled after the happy couple. This was actually something I'd thought of doing for my own wedding but ultimately "deprioritized" the idea, so it was fun to get the chance to undertake the project for my friends.

As depicted in effigy, the real bride indeed wore a white flower in her hair and carried a bouquet of apple-green blossoms, and the detailing of her gown involved lots of horizontal pleats, which I mimicked with layered ribbon. As for the groom, art imitated life in that all I had to do was put him in a suit and a color-appropriate tie next to a lovely lady and he would look handsome and distinguished.

In lieu of a traditional cake, these guys went the cupcake route -- a stylized tier of them decorated in lemon drops and yellow polka-dot icing, i.e., the most adorable wedding cake display I've ever seen.


The event was held in a loft-like art gallery with the ceremony and dinner in an outdoor courtyard and a leisurely reception afterwards inside the gallery, complete with a pool table, foosball, and a photobooth. That apple green color was carried throughout the space using flowers, paper lanterns ... even the bride's polka-dot clutch.


And did I mention that the photobooth was really awesome?

Unlikely Quartet

An old friend recently asked me if I'd make clothespin dolls of her daughters' favorite book characters, characters that were too unusual to be available as mass-market children's dolls. Thinking that for two girls under the age of four the requests were bound to be something simple, fun and girly, I said sure.

So imagine my surprise when she named the desired figures: Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, St. Peter, and "some sort of Spider Lady (Halloweeny, not like Spider Man)."

These are some unusual little girls! Little girls who clearly have some books about historical and religious figures in the house. Also, I'm told, little girls who love snakes and insects, and think kittens and bunnies are "icky." I love this. And as it turned out, the challenges of making their chosen figures recognizable was more interesting than any pink-and-purple fairy princess doll.

Here is Honest Abe, posed against a sort of prairie woodland backdrop. His top hat is made of electrical tape, as is his iconic bow tie.


I don't know about you, but I never formed much of a concept of St. Peter or what he should look like, not even with 16 years of Catholic schooling. Luckily, my two-year-old client had the answers. She felt he should have a halo, a long red garment, and a fish net.

The halo is a gold paillette from the craft store. I glued the heck out of that thing so it will hopefully withstand the test of toddler fingers. I really love the way the fishnet turned out - I just sort of made up a crochet stitch (I know very little about crochet), and then stitched on several felt fish. The backdrop is from a calendar of Scottish landscapes, but it reminded me of those Biblical pictures from the '70s. The photo even has that 3-D postcard image quality - what is that called? When you shift the angle of the card and the image moves?

Here is Abe again, this time posed with Jesus. I felt a little ... blasphemous? ... making a Jesus doll. False idols, or something. Also, his beard looks more like he's been eating chocolate than like a beard. He is wearing the blue sash because my friend's four-year-old thought he should have one, "like Miss America." There he is, Mr. Jesus ... And I think somehow it does distinguish him as special from the rest of the gown-wearing, long-haired, chocolate-eating masses. Jesus and Abe are pictured here in heaven ... or maybe Antarctica.


This one's my favorite: Spider Lady! I hope she doesn't frighten her two-year-old owner. But hey, she asked for it!


The embroidered spider web on her dress is inspired by a similar one my mom made on my Halloween witch's costume when I was three. The story goes that the morning of Halloween, when presented with the costume I had begged for and my mother had slaved over, I cried and cried, and said I didn't want to be a scary witch - I wanted to be a fairy princess! So apparently I, too, flirted with a snakes-and-spiders phase. Though as it turned out, I was still more of a pink-and-purple girl at heart.