© 2019 Jennie Bagrowski

Wren Feathers OG Bendable Body Swap

As always, this pattern is © by me (Jennie Bagrowski) and is for your personal use only, you MAY share it by linking to this blog, you may NOT sell it or upload it to any site without my permission. If you sell things made from this pattern I’d

appreciate credit for the pattern design. If you downloaded this elsewhere it was stolen from: http://jenwrenne.wordpress.com

I assume you have basic sewing knowledge and the explanation should suffice, but if you need help please email me!

I have a fun and fairly easy project for you this week that could potentially make a big difference in your doll’s photogenic-ness. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago with Mienna, I really like her wired insides, and it turns out, the more I interact with her, the more I like the ability to separate the legs for better standing. You can see in the promo pics of OGs that they often cross the dolls’ legs, which of course means they were originally on a stand that had to get photoshopped out, which is a time-consuming process and reduces the spontaneity of being able to share pix. The second thing I love is the ability to just put a little more “life” into the arms. The OGs and Maplelea share an arms-at-the-sides pose that looks a little stiff and unnatural (more so on the Mapleleas in my opinion) compared to the AGs. So even though I haven’t been bending Mienna’s limbs at 90-degree angles, with the wires it’s possible to bend the arms into a nicer curve at rest that doesn’t feel so stiff. As you can imagine, seeing the prospect of better posing with one OG made me take a good look at the rest of them, because many of the newer ones (Melina, Leticia, Rafael, etc.) have face molds I find very attractive, but don’t show up on the blog because of posing limitations. So, this past weekend when we were at Target and they were on sale, we snapped up a posable one with the standard face mold and decided to see if some “plastic surgery” was possible that could improve posing on a head I liked better. Spoiler alert – it was easy! So my now-custom Rafael can stand and pose far better than before, and the standard head got swapped onto old his body, so there wasn’t any waste of parts in the process. Do you NEED to do this? For an OG play doll, no, and in fact, you’ll violate the safety testing if you modify the dolls at all, since safety testing got done with the dolls as they came from the factory, so there’s a possibility your modifications could result in a doll who is not child-safe. If you’re an adult wanting better posing ability though, read on…

Wow, I can

bend!! 😊

Wish I still

could…☹

© 2019 Jennie Bagrowski

You’ll need some wire-cutters, needle nose pliers, a seam ripper, blow dryer, strong cord, and needle and thread. Optional: chopstick/knitting needle

Use a seam ripper to pull out a few stitches at the neck and spread the fabric open to expose the tie wrap. Cut

open and carefully remove. For the normal doll, the head will now just pop right out, but for the wired doll, there’s an extra plastic piece holding the head on. We were able to pry it off using the nose of the needle nose pliers for leverage. Find a strong cotton cord and thread it through the neck openings with a safety pin, leaving

long strings at the back like AG used to do. Swap the heads, using a blow dryer to warm the opening of the head that’s going onto the wired body to help ease it onto the plastic neck part. Tie the cords as tightly as

possible with a square knot and, if you’re a perfectionist like my husband, use something long and pointy like a chopstick to hide the long ends of the cord inside the body. Use a needle and thread to stitch everything you

snipped open back up by hand. That’s it!

© 2019 Jennie Bagrowski

© 2019 Jennie Bagrowski

© 2019 Jennie Bagrowski