As all of you probably know, I received my cuddle baby last night.
I asked the artist to please weigh her to five pounds and I like my reborns on the heavy side. She feels heavy and that’s good.
What I’m wondering is how “squishy” she should feel? I’ve been kneading the limbs and torso in hopes of making her feel a bit less stiff. I can feel she has just poly fill in her arms and top of her torso, as well as the tops of her legs. There’s beads from her knee to her ankle. Poly fill in her upper torso and beads on the bottom.
I’m scared to keep on kneading the doll because of this:
If this is the way a cuddle baby is, then I’ll leave it. I’ve never held one so I don’t know what to expect. But if it’s not, I’ll get the body redone.
What do you think?
(And the head won’t be staying. The talented and generous Leabelle, who also donated her time, talent, and supplies to make the Wilber baby for my bereaved friend, is reborning a Kyrie head for me!
Hmm… Some fills crush down, but if it’s really packed in tight, no amount of kneading will change it much. If there isn’t much air inside and it’s already compressed, there just isn’t anywhere for it to go.
Does it feel like it’s done anything?
Someone more familiar with stuffing materials may be able to answer, but it’s personal, so if it feels too firm to you then maybe some stuffing should be removed.
I’m wondering if it should be more limp, for lack of a better word. To answer your question, it does feel like it moved a bit from where the beads settled.
I do put beads in the arms of cuddle bodies, seems odd to me to not do that. If you can sew, you can open it up and take some polyfill out to make it less stiff, then just sew it back up.
I usually weight mine with plastic pellets up to the elbow and knee, rest fill with polyfill. It’s not really floppy but very cuddly and poseable.
I use glass beads and polyfill in the torso like a regular doll.
5lbs is heavy for a cuddle baby, as the polypellets weight less than glass beads, so yours is maybe well packed.
As for the stitches, you can sew it more properly if you know how
Please be careful of kneading a cuddle baby. They are for comfort and holding not kneading. I could never weight a cuddle body that heavy so good that she was able to but that body is stuffed and if you keep doing that you’re going to split it. I usually only use the plastic pellets also which don’t have the weight the glass beads do.
I just thought, is glass beads or polypellets that’s in the limbs?
If you use glass beads in nylon stockings instead of polypellets you will be able to get the weight without the stiffness.
Kneading is the motion you made to work with dough, or the motion kittens make to encourage momma cat to let down milk. It’s a squeezing/squishing movement.
It can’t be more limp and weigh 5 pounds. Basically you gave up the fluff factor by asking for it to weigh so much. I know because this happened with my Jamie cuddle baby. He was around 2 pounds. He felt great and was soft and cuddly. But the customer wanted him reweighted to 5 pounds. In order to make that happen, I had to pretty much line with insides with stockings and pack the whole body and all of the limbs with beads. There was very little room for polyfil after that. He felt like a rock to me. But she wanted a 5 pound baby, so that’s what she got.
As for your seams…that type of body has openings for the artist to fill the limbs. Then they hand sew the openings. It looks like the doll is just stuffed so full that it’s stressing the seams. But again…that’s what it takes to get a 5 pound cuddle baby.
Exactly. I’ve sold a couple of cuddle babies and they wanted them to be squishy but weigh more. That to me doesn’t work out. It’s harder to make cuddle babies than a full reborn. lol
I like the way this baby looks like it’s ready for a hug. The feet are nice and tapered too so they won’t look so bulky while it’s dressed. Is there a plan for the extra head you’ll have, Barbara?
That’s good to know. I saw some cute ones on reborns that just have a reborn baby face glued onto a modified stuffed animal body so they look like kids in costumes. Looks unique and a great way to get some use out of heads that might have been to damaged to use whole, and give a new life to some stuffies. They only have a few pounds of weight in them.
Well, it’s the fabric body. I do know of some cuddle babies where the glass beads are poured directly into the fabric limbs and I can’t do that because they will eventually work their way out, esp from the seams. If they are to be heavy then it’s just not safe all around. Vinyl can really be stuffed safely. In my work, I’ve had to deal with safely issues and liability so it’s always in the back of my head.
Again, I have to just get a new body. I’ll be selling this one. The wonderful artist doing the Kyrie head for me will be doing a new body as well. This doll doesn’t seem to be put together right according to my gut and what all of you are saying. Thanks for your input!
She looks put together correctly per your instructions of what you wanted. You wanted a heavy cuddle body baby and that is what it’s looks like you received. Please before you sell her, reinforce the seams that are stressed. No matter what the cuddle baby will feel like a bean bag doll. Unless it’s just stuffed with poly-fill and then it won’t have any weight to it besides with head.
I’d definitely order a new cuddly Jody from bountiful baby and use that.
I understand how you feel about weight. I like my babies heavy too, but also squishy. You could weigh a body yourself to just how you like it. I used a mixture of Poly pellets and steel bbs in my soft bodied dolls. The bodies were also lined if that makes sense… so all the limbs, body and head had another fleece layer inside them. Made them nice and snuggly
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