I loved my little nesting doll ( from my previous post) so much, that I decided to make a garland out of these little ladies.
Here, I will share with you how I made mine.

I love the flexibility of this project, it's easy to make, uses little materials, and is a great way to put your scraps to good use.

There are 4 basic parts to my doll. I will explain how I layered mine to form the basic doll, then you can embellish it in whatever crazy way you can come up with. You can use any fabric you desire for any of the parts. I chose to keep mine pretty simple, but you can choose to go nuts. If you find yourself short of inspiration, google Russian nesting dolls, or Matryoshka dolls. This is what I did when looking for inspiration. I giggled when I happened upon a site that declared nesting dolls "the owls of 2010"

Simply click on the image below to enlarge, and print out. Cut along the crooked black lines.

In the spirit of not using patterns, I will simply call these templates. :)

**What you need**
* Printed, and cut templates.
* Eco-felt scraps, fabric scraps, trims.
* Triangles cut from felt. Most of mine measure 1 1/2" across the top, and 2" long. They don't have to   be perfectly cut to this size. Not all of mine are measured perfectly. I used 24 total.
* Fuseable interfacing. Optional.
* Icky, messy, smelly fabric glue.
* A length of embroidery thread cut to your preferred measurements.
* Needle, scissors.


First you need to cut out the body. If you choose to use felt for the body, you will only need to cut out one piece of the body template (#1). If you use a lighter weight fabric, you will need to cut two pieces of your fabric (one for the front, and one for the back) and cut one piece of fuseable interfacing to stiffen up your project. Go ahead, and fuse your interfacing to one of your body pieces now.

Cut out your head (#2), hair (#3), and babushka (#4). Remember to cut around the inner circle inside the babushka making a hole.

Next, glue #2 to #1 lining up the edges.

Then, glue #3 on top of #2 lining up the edges.

Now, glue #4 on top of #3 lining up the edges.

I cut out bits of fabric and felt for my dolls faces, and glued them on, but there are many ways to do these. You can embroider eyes and lips, paint them on using fabric ink, use buttons...the only thing there is no question about are the rosy cheeks. Your doll must have them. Why? Well because...:)

Embellishing the body is fun. You can make ties for the babushka by cutting out tiny almond shaped bits, and gluing them near the point.

You can give them little aprons to wear, glue ribbons, lace, ric-rac, trim, and fabric onto their tummies. You can also embroider pretty flowers too. Go crazy!

*If you have used fabric instead of felt for the body, then follow this next step. If you used felt, you can choose to skip it.*

Pin the front of your body to the back of your body. Then set your machine to a zig-zag stitch on the shortest stitch setting, and stitch all around the edges. I used a contrasting thread to give it more interest.

Once you have finished sewing, trim around the doll to even out your edges. I made four of these dolls.

With all of your dolls finished, you're ready to string everything onto your embroidery thread. I measured mine at 10 feet. That was the length I needed for my space.

I strung 3 little triangles up by running a single small stitch near the top.

Then I slipped a doll on, near the top of her head in the same way.

I alternated between 1 doll, and 6 triangles until I got to the end of the floss. There I stitched on 3 triangles again. Did that make sense? Of course this step is as flexible as the rest of the steps in this tutorial.

Now you're all done. Go ahead and hang these up in a gloomy corner, and stare at them for an hour or two.