Plush Nightlight: Doll In Love

For the latest iteration of this project, I wanted to make a doll that was both male and had nothing to do with warfare. My reasoning was that boys ought to have toys that enable them to explore being sensitive and nurturing without feeling like doing so compromises their masculinity. This is a doll, and not an action figure or superhero. It’s a little boy, like them, and has a light up red “heart” to underscore his anthropomorphic, feeling nature.

Supplies:

• tan felt
• light blue twill
• white jersey
• brown buttons
• fiber fill
• thread
• 1 red LED
• AA battery pack
• 2 AA batteries

I began by tracing and cutting out patterns for the doll’s body, hands, feet, and head from the felt:

I fortunately bought extra materials, since it took me several attempts to get the body parts and head in the right proportions.

I then set to work cutting patterns for and sewing together his shorts and t-shirt. This easily took the longest, and was especially tricky since his clothes were very small and hard to stitch.

The thing I wasn’t able to execute that well was shaping the red light for his heart. The LED light diffused somewhat okay under the white jersey, but still appeared in the round shape of the LED bulb. I experimented with placing it behind a transpired silicon heart, cutting a heart shape out of a piece of felt and mounting the LED behind it, and even stitching a heart with red thread onto his shirt and mounting the LED behind it like before, but none of these worked.

To give you an idea of the look I was going for, I photoshopped this version below:

I’d like to continue working on this little guy. I want to get the light to be a perfect heart shape like above, I want to use a mini Arduino board and mini battery pack to make the heart pulse slowly like a heartbeat, mount everything inside his body, and add hair and a smile.