Santa body sewing

I started sewing together the body for the Santa Doll.  Except for the modifications on the head and ears, I followed all the pattern directions.  I do have 3 tips for working with soft dolls like this

1)  Use a short sewing stitch.  I used 2.0 except for the hands which I dropped down even further to 1.5

2)  Use fray check on all head, hand and feet seams.  It's worth the extra time and expense

3)  When making tight turns such as around each finger or around the nose and mouth, it sometimes can be hard to see where you need to turn depending on what your sewing foot looks like.  When I got to the hands, I switched to the darning foot. This really helped me see better for accurate sewing.

Sewn pieces ready for fray check.  The fray check can be watery so, I put something under it that I toss out once everything is dried.

Regular foot on the right and the darning foot I used for the hands on the left

I did find some pictures of the elf that I made last year so, I put them here.  This is the pattern I'm using for the Santa.