Custom Stuffed Santa Panel Tutorial

Start with an old Santa Panel preferably one that is prior to 1970. Copyright Laws last 37 years I believe unless the copyright is renewed. So anything prior to 1970 you should be pretty safe. As with any of my freebies that I give out, these are for personal use only and are not to be sold. Anyway, I found this little guy in the Thrift Store. Judging from what he was stuffed with as well as the illustration itself, I would guess he's from about the 1950s. Also, I've seen him on E-bay several times sold as a full size "do it yourself" pillow doll panel and that's the estimate they gave for his age as well. Since mine was not a full size panel, I had to pick the doll apart. I scanned him into my computer both front side and back.
Then, using my graphics program, I carefully removed his face. I did the same thing to his backside by removing Santa's hair as well. I had an idea that he was not going to be Santa Claus but Santa Bear!
Next, I substituted a cute bear face that came with my graphics program in where Santa's should be. On the backside, I just colored in his hair with the same color used for his face. You can see what I did better in the finished picture below.

Here's my final picture. To get your own Santa Bear doll and ornament that I created you can just click HERE or on the picture above. I printed mine out on June Tailor Colorfast Inkjet Fabric Sheets that you can buy at your local sewing store usually in the quilting section. This project is designed to fit on one 8 1/2 x 11 sheet. Just print it, iron it (to set the colors) and then cut them out and sew them together. The larger one makes either a large ornament, package topper or cute vintage style doll for your other larger dolls or bears to hold and the smaller one can be worn as a pin, used as an ornament or package topper, or given to your favorite Blythe doll to hold.

Enjoy!