When friend recently used strips of tulle to wrap up some presents for me, I just couldn’t bear to throw it away. I thought about making a tutu for one of the Waldorf dolls, but then realized the strips were just about the right width to make some peg doll ballerinas.
I folded the strips lengthwise to get the layers. The two outer dolls have 8 layers of tulle. I think that is really too much. The middle doll with the polka dot ribbon has 4 layers of tulle in her tutu. It is just lighter and seems to float a bit compared to the thicker ones. But really, they are all fine.
I made the first tutu hand basting the folded edge to gather the tulle. It slipped and slid a bit and I needed to baste it twice before I caught all the layers. I basted the other two tutus on the sewing machine, using the longest stitch length, and that worked much better. I had to use a 1/4 wide ribbon to hide the gathered edge of the tutu. Once I had the ribbon attached, I cut the lower folded edge of tulle to create the right length for the tutu. Yes, they are almost floor length, but any shorter, there would hardly be any tutu at all! So, a little artist liberty was taken!
These are standard boy size 2 3/8 inch wood peg dolls. I used the boys because girl pegs have sloping sides and the tutu would never have stayed on. I sanded off any roughness in the wood and painted them with Lyra opaque watercolor paint, mixing the tube of white paint with some of the red and magenta watercolor to create this pink.
I painted the hair down from the midline doll’s head to create a center part. Then I added buns on the backs of the the ballerina’s heads by using a slightly darker color to paint a small circle.
After the paint dried, I polished the peg dolls with Three BEEautiful Bees beewax polish. I allowed the polish to soak into the wood, and then buffed it with a scrap of flannel.
Finally I added the facial features with felt tip makers.
It’s been a while since I last made any peg dolls, so this was lots of fun. And it was the perfect way to repurpose those tulle “ribbons”!
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