Cynthia

Cynthia is a character from the Raggedy Ann franchise who was only found in a series of eight read-along cassette & book sets from 1979. It's unfortunate she's basically unknown, because she's really cute and provides some much-needed diversity in the cast! Since her time in the series was so short-lived, she never got any official merch, so I decided to make a couple replica dolls myself.

I made these using my standard doll pattern. I wanted to make more, but landed on just doing two for now.

Cynthia wears a checkered turtleneck, which I simplified to a plain yellow one since I wanted it to be made of jersey, and red pants with suspenders. Since she was introduced in the 70's I looked at kid's fashion of the era, and adjusted a pants pattern I had used for this doll style before.

For her hair, I planned out the lines on which I would sew the wefts so they could be gathered into her four pigtails without leaving any gaps. After using two-sided wefts for the outer edge I reallized this was WAY too much yarn, and ended up cutting it on the inner side. The wefts that run along the back of the head are still two-sided, so that each side could be pulled into seperate pigtails.

After I finished the hair on both dolls, it was time for the faces. I did my best to mimick the design of the books.