Free paper doll SVG files

Chains and dressing dolls

A paper doll chain is what you get by folding a strip like a fan and cutting one doll through every layer, leaving the hands uncut at the folds. These files draw the finished chain, so a cutting machine makes it in one pass with no folding, and every doll is the right way round. The hands overlap, so the chain is a single piece however you handle it. To make a longer one, cut two and glue the end hands together.

A dressing doll is the other kind: a figure of stiff card and loose clothes of paper. Each garment has tabs, two on the shoulders or two at the waist or both, which fold back behind the doll and hold it on. The fold at the foot of each tab is cut as a short slit, so the tab bends in the right place without scoring. The clothes are drawn from the doll’s own measurements with a millimetre or so to spare, so they sit on the shoulders and close round the waist.

Sizes and card

The files are 100 mm on their longer side. Cut a chain 280 mm long and its dolls are about 100 to 160 mm tall, which suits a mantelpiece or a classroom wall; cut it 140 mm long and they fit a card front. Cut the dressing dolls 200 mm tall for small hands: the tabs are then about 15 mm wide, easy to fold and hard to tear.

Use 250 to 300 gsm card for a doll and 120 to 160 gsm paper for her clothes, so the tabs fold flat. Chains look best in 160 to 200 gsm card that stands up on its own when the chain is bent into a zigzag. If you cut the clothes sheet at the same scale as the doll, they fit; the note on that sheet gives the width to use.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions