Polly: FreeSewing's Polly Plush
Designer Notes
Polly is a base to make simple humanoid or anthropomorphic fabric dolls. It has many options to change the size and proportions of the doll, and a couple of alternate heads and legs to allow for more animal-like characters.
Polly does not come with clothes or a face. Pick your own favorite method for the face and hair. If you want to make clothes, I have excellent news - you’re currently on a website that lets you draft clothes at doll scale. Go wild!
What You Need
- Basic sewing supplies
- About 0.25 meters (0.27 yards) of a suitable fabric (see Fabric options)
Fabric Options
Polly’s pattern pieces were drawn with nonstretch fabrics in mind. If you use a fabric with some horizontal stretch instead, none of the techniques change, but the final shape will be more squat by comparison, especially around the head. (Image here to display what that means)
Polly is very much intended as a scrap-buster project. Small amounts of fabric you have lying around from other projects will be perfect for this. I wouldn’t recommend anything sheer, or anything too thick or heavy like fleece or denim if you’re working at small scales. The larger you go, the thicker the fabric you can get away with.
For stuffing, you can use more of those same scraps. If your body fabric is light-colored, you’ll want to use light-colored material for stuffing. If it’s dark, you can get away with any color. Other options include, but are not limited to, rice, beans, gravel from the ground outside (washed!), torn-up plastic grocery bags, glass beads for weighting plush toys, or if you’re fancy, even polyfill.
Cutting Instructions
For the body
Cut these pieces regardless of what options you’re using.
- Cut 1 body front
- Cut 2 body backs, mirrored
- Cut 2 arm tops
- Cut 2 arm bottoms
For the head
For the split head
- Cut 2 faces, mirrored
- Cut 2 head backs, mirrored
For the mirrored head
- Cut 1 face
- Cut 2 head backs, mirrored
For the snouted head
- Cut 1 snout forehead
- Cut 1 snout top
- Cut 2 snout head sides, mirrored
For the hairline head
From the hair fabric:
- Cut 2 forehead hair, mirrored
- Cut 2 hair back, mirrored
From the main fabric:
- Cut 2 neck backs
- Cut 2 face with hairline, mirrored
For the legs
For the cylinder legs
- Cut 2 legs, mirrored
- Cut 2 feet
For the anthro legs
- Cut 2 anthro leg outers, mirrored
- Cut 2 anthro leg inners, mirrored
- Cut 2 anthro foot uppers
- Cut 2 anthro foot soles