On Designing Toy Faces

Do you like sewing soft toys? If so, how do you choose a project? I would bet the toy’s face is the main decider. If the face isn’t right, it’s a pass.

I quite like making toys. I liked making them when my children were little and enjoyed doing a pattern for a cloth doll and recently a Humpty Dumpty. I discovered quite quickly that when it comes to faces, there’s a fine line between cute and creepy. Creepy is astonishingly easy, and cute takes work!

Have you tried designing a stuffed toy? At their simplest, they’re shaped cushions with a face.

While I’m no artist, here are some random design thoughts and lessons I’ve learnt. Big thanks to my teen for her insights too.

Simplest is Easiest

I can’t stress this enough: keep it as simple as you can. The more detail you try to incorporate into a face, the higher the chances of creepy.

The simplest faces require two eyes. Add a mouth or nose or both, possibly eyebrows and maybe rosy cheeks if the face uses colour.

The less features there are, the less chance of messing it up. A simple face can be very charming and surprisingly expressive.

Can you recognise these famous simple faces?

Proportions Matter

Some face shapes and sizes register as cuter to our human brains. Generally,

Bigger eyes = cuter

Wider apart eyes = cuter

Smaller noses and mouths = cuter

On a human face, the corners of the mouth are in line with the centres of the eyes, but for toys the eyes are often further apart for cuteness. Eyes on humans sit halfway down the head, and for toys they often are too, or a bit lower.

When designing a face, I find it really helps to cut the features out in paper and move them around the face. The proportions will change a little bit when the head is stuffed and becomes 3D, but this is a good guide.

Should the eyes be solid or have eyeballs? Solid is simpler, but eyeballs can work well. Eyes looking to the side often feature on vintage dolls, such as early Barbies and Kewpie dolls. Sometimes eyes on toys are drawn shut, like the toy is sleeping.

Eyebrows, if you use them, can dramatically change the the expression.

Noses at their simplest can be drawn as two dots to indicate the nostrils, or as a U shape or upside down U. Be careful how much detail you give the nose; it needs to match the rest of the face.

Wide mouths can look creepy, but not always. It’s easier not to show teeth as it brings another level of detail in and heightens the potential for creepy.

The Medium Informs the Design

How are you making the face? Hand or machine embroidery? Felt tipped pen? Printing? Some of these will allow you to show more detail; others require simplicity.

If you’re using hand embroidery, the design needs to be large enough for the embroidery stitches. I favour satin stitch for solid eyes and stem stitch for everything else. If stem stitch is too big, I switch to backstitch for more detail. I use DMC or Anchor embroidery floss, three strands.

Evaluate your own embroidery skills. Embroidery isn’t hard but it needs practice.

Should you use colour for the face? I tend to stick to either black or dark navy for all the features as it’s very safe. If you’re doing a colour for the eyes, then it makes sense to use colour for all the features as going back to black for the nose and mouth might look odd. However, it’s more difficult to get right when you add colour.

Dark fabrics can be an issue, one which I haven’t really got a good answer to. If the background is too dark, then black features get lost, and felt tipped pens, black printing and black embroidery thread are impossible to use. What if you use a lighter colour embroidery thread? I tried this with a zero waste doll made in beautiful brown velveteen.

Alas, it looked a little blank, but less so when I coloured the eyes to look sideways.

Darker, thicker fabrics are trickier to transfer pattern markings to as you cannot use a light box, but with a bit of care you can make a template by cutting out the features with a craft knife and drawing them in with a white pencil. You may have to freestyle the details.

Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion on a face! Often when we look at something for so long we don’t really see it anymore, and we convince ourselves it’s okay, but it’s the first impressions that matter the most for toys.

Cheers!