You can color the sheet cotton slightly here and there with water-color paint if you are clever with a paint brush. As you work with these little dolls and animals you will find ever so many ways to vary them in effect. They are so soft and fluffy that a baby can play with them without injury, and a school or college boy may be amused by being presented with one, appropriately dressed, as a souvenir of pleasant experiences at a college luncheon or dinner.
To make a foot-ball player, finish the blouse without necktie or belt; make the shoulders wide and the hair rather short, like a college boy's rough head. So much for the boy. Paste a letter cut out of colored paper on the front of the blouse to make it look like a college sweater, and gather the trousers in a little at the knees. You can tuck an egg-shaped ball made of brown raw wool under one arm for a realistic touch, if you choose.
Little girl dolls may be similarly made to represent basket-ball players in short skirts and school or college sweaters, with appropriate emblems on the front, for a special entertainment.
Making these figures is much less trouble than dressing dolls entails, and much more of a novelty, too. They take so many shapes that they fit almost any occasion.
In fact, the possibilities of these cotton and clothespin toys are almost endless in the hands of ingenious young people.