Wednesday Craft Group - Spring Peg Doll Tutorial

Today we made peg doll flowers ~

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

a host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze....

from The Daffodils by William Wordsworth

When I took over as craft group co-ordinator at the beginning of the year I also took temporary storage of about a bazillion of those clear plastic storage boxes full of 'stuff'. It has taken some time but I have poked around in each of the boxes and found the most amazing things. I am a bit frugal, don't like to waste, don't want to spend money on new stock when there was boxes of stuff to be made use of. Anyway in one of the boxes there were about 50 wooden pegs; I had no idea what to do with them and so I googled. I found that you can also get 'heads' and 'bases' for the pegs ~ now that opened up new possibilities.

Spring is just about sprug here in Brisbane, the weather is glorious ~ the last of the winter chill only appearing as the sun sets and only lingering til dawn...so I felt a bit springy and I made up these little patterns. I hope you enjoy them, easy peasy even for those with little fingers who may like to join in.

Peg Doll Flower ingredients for a Daffodil ~
(I apologise for the dodgy pictures, I was stitching at night and didn't realise how poor the light really was)


Download the pattern templates from here and cut out yor pieces. Glue your three peg pieces together and set them aside to dry. (I found that the 'head' beads don't go all the way on, no matter how hard you shove, so I just made the dress to fit her long neck)

Lay your collar piece over the skirt, matching the top edges as show above, and then stitch a small running/gathering stitch straight across ~ take note of the stitching line on the pattern template, it is about 1cm from the top edge. The pull up your stitching to gather

Wrap the gathered dress around the doll's neck and pull tight to make the gathers fit. Then stitch securely using whatever method comes to you. Using matching thread whip stitch, blanket or how ever else you fancy down the dress centre back seam to close it.

Play around with her hair, fiddling til you like the look and then carefully glue it on as a wig ~ set her aside to let it dry (I used curly fleece).

To make the daffodil make a row of small running stitches close to the straight edge and then pull to gather and secure the two ends together.

Take your little rectangle piece and roll up the long edge til it is small enough to fit neatly inside the centre of the petals and secure it with some small stitches. At one of the open ends cut a couple of slots so that it will open out and sit flat (see pic below) then poke the tube up into the petal piece with the flaps you just cut staying underneath on the wrong side.

Stitch the flaps to the underside of the petals section to hold the two pieces together.

Flip it over, make loads of little cuts in the top of the trumpet ~ flower done! (I think these would look good on hair clips too...now there is an idea!)

Glue the flower hat to your doll and you are finished ~

I have plans for this little Daffodil flower child to travel to South Africa to my blogging friend Linda's home. Linda designed and then shared a tutorial for a stunning knitted Daffodil last week on her blog Natural Suburbia ~ anyway I thought one good deed deserves another. If you would like her Linda, she is yours!