Soft Toy Making

By Ouida Pearse

This is a vintage guide to making an array of soft toys out of various materials. With simple, step-by-step instructions and helpful diagrams, this volume is ideal for people with little previous experiences and is not to be missed by those looking for exciting new craft ideas. Contents include: "Introductory", "Very Simple Toys", "Toys Made of Tubular Shapes", "Silhouette Toys", "Real Dolls", "Real Animals", "Mascots and Freak Toys", and "Boudoir or Sofa Dolls". Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing "Soft Toy Making" now in a modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on the history of toys.

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Press
• Release date: Oct 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473343474

Book preview

SOFT TOY MAKING

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

FROM the very earliest times men, women, and children have made toys; the craft of Toy Making has this advantage over other crafts in that toys have almost always been made for the pure love of making them or for some much-loved child, so that their production has called forth the very best that is in the producer.

Soft toys seem to have been most made during the last fifty years, and they may be ranked among the most popular of modern toys. Taking a glance at the toys which remain to us in museums dolls are best represented, but there are not many rag or soft ones. It may be that stuffed toys have been made, but not being as durable as those of wood and other materials, few have come down to us, and animals and other toys are nearly always made of wood, bone, metal, or some fairly hard substance. One of the most delightful of the ancient animals is the lion in a case in the fourth Egyptian Room, British Museum. It is carved in wood, and has a movable lower jaw which can be worked up and down by pulling a string which passes up through the top of its head.

While in the same museum, in the Greek and Roman Life Room, is a rag doll, third century A.D. It is made of coarse linen and is very dilapidated. The body and head seem to be sewn into a shape and stuffed with rag, and the arms and legs are rolls of linen.

In this little book it is hoped to indicate methods and ideas for soft toy making which will be useful in the Home. For a hand-made toy possesses more character and is far more durable than most shop toys, besides the pleasure which will be got from making it.

In schools soft toy making, besides being a craft which calls forth every faculty, can also be made a useful aid to study.

HISTORY. If a class of girls studying a certain period in history made a set of dolls and dressed them in the costume of that period, their work would have a wonderful meaning and reality. This need not give a lot of work to the teacher, as the reference libraries have excellent books on costume (one of the best being Costume and Fashion,by Herbert Morris, in two volumes), and the girls can go and search out the style of costume for themselves. Neither need it be expensive, as the dolls may be as simple in type as those in the Girl Doll Jane, Chapter