Learn how to carve a Hitty doll from wood with step-by-step guides, carving tips, tools, patterns, finishing techniques, and helpful resources.
In this tutorial I show you how to carve your Hitty’s feet. When carving the feet, you should always use very light cuts since the feet are pegged. The peg joint is a strong joint for Hitty play, but if too much pressure is applied, one could break the foot off.
Carving the lower leg is much easier than carving the upper leg because there’s not much “shaping” to it. All one has to do is gently round the leg from knee to foot.
The Turned Hitty Blank comes with a leg piece that has “pegged” feet like the original Hitty. This peg has been centered where it is placed up the foot, into the square leg piece. When carving the lower leg, you should periodically look at the bottom of the foot and eyeball the peg with your cuts. You don’t want to cut so deep that you cut the peg.
The foot has been reinforced with wood glue as well, so if you accidentally cut into the peg, don’t despair. You can add a dot of super glue to the cut area for added strength, or use wood putty to repair the cut.
You’ll be using the same rough cutter to carve the lower leg, as you used to carve the upper leg.
Carving the legs and arms consists mainly of “rounding” your blanks. There’s some shaping involved, but mostly it’s removing and rounding the “bulk” areas using a series of angled cuts.
To carve the upper leg, first take a ruler and measure exactly 1 1/8″ from the bottom of the peg hole. This is where the “knee” will be placed.
This tutorial shows how to finish the Hitty body on the turned Hitty blank. Here’s what the blank looks like as you receive it.
This Hitty hat will fit the tiniest Hitty head, up to a Raikes Hitty head when crocheted with size 10 thread and hook. It has beading elastic at the crown to allow for “stretch” to fit just about any Hitty’s head.
Below are images of the bits I use when I am power carving a Hitty. I don’t know the proper names for some of the bits, so I took detailed photos so one can clearly see the shape and grit of the bits.
This is the bit I use the most. I use it to do most of my carving. It leaves a very rough finish, so I always leave enough wood to be sanded away using my barrel sanders, without making my limbs too tiny. I have found that if I carve too small with this bit, then once sanded smooth, the limbs are very petite and tiny.
If you’re new to carving Hittys, then you may find yourself struggling with the same problems I had when I first started learning to carve Hitty.
One, I had no Hitty of my own to use as a reference for size.
Two, I found it very difficult to round certain areas where all areas were carved in harmony. My neck would be a bit off from the waist, the hairline would be too thick on one side. I’d have to carve away to try and get the waist, neck, head centered, and then try to get the body to still “look right”.