How I made Gale of Waterdeep with yarn and fabric

01 Jul, 2025

If you’re reading this, hi, welcome to this space I have no idea what to do with. I’ve been wanting to get some kind of blog to share my creative endeavors for a while now, and this project is the perfect starting point (might also be the last - who knows if I’ll ever make anything else worth blogging about 😂).

These last months working on this Gale Dekarios doll have been such a fun ride. When I started researching how to go about making this doll, I wasn’t able to find resources that would help with the very specific thing I saw in my mind.

So, because I went through the very fun process of figuring out how to (try to) achieve that result I wanted, I thought I’d document it here for mostly two reasons:

1. Give it a month and I’ll have forgotten all of it. Not that I plan on making another, but you never know. I like to look at old projects and remember what it was like to work on them.
2. Maybe someone some day can’t sleep and ends up searching “how to make Gale of Waterdeep with yarn and fabric” at 2am.

The Project

I thought I’d share a bit about why I made this thing as this project has been pretty special to me - it has sort of kept me afloat during a tough time this year. TL;DR: I lost my job and unemployment hit me in unexpected ways. It’s also kind of ironic that I finished the doll exactly one week after getting a new job.

If you’d rather skip the Tale of Why, feel free to scroll down to the actually useful information.

Why I decided to make Gale of Waterdeep

Summer of 2024 was a bad time, and when I played Baldur’s Gate 3 for the first time I just wanted to forget the real world for a few hours and have fun. Instead, I discovered what would become one of my favorite games of all time, and engaging with it kickstarted something in my life that I still struggle to understand (in a good way).

As for Gale specifically, let’s just say I relate to him in ways I’ve hardly related to characters before. Granted, I’ve never had a bomb near my heart nor have been in an abusive relationship with a Goddess, buuuut well. I’ll leave it at that. The community largely agrees that Gale is neurodivergent and, while I don’t really know about myself, I know certain sides of Gale are painfully relatable. Also, he’s a character who learns that having been through difficult things doesn’t make you less worthy of good things.

Anyway. Caring about this character led me to come across the two people who inspired this project. The first and most important is a writer who quite literally changed my life (Very Dramatic Statement™️, I know. But it’s true. If you’re said writer and you’re reading this… well, you wouldn’t recognize my username so nevermind).

The second is an online creator whom I stumbled across during the early days of my unemployment and whose creativity inspired me enough to get my ass off the metaphorical couch (I prefer self-commiserating in bed) and start this project despite all the “but’s” my brain would come up with:

• “But why would I spend money for supplies while I’m unemployed?”
• “But what’s the point of spending hours and hours on something that’s not functional???”
• “But I’m 30-something, why would I make a doll of a videogame character?????” It took me a few days of battling with my brain to come up with the answer: “Because I fucking want to”.

Way too many times I don’t make something if I think I won’t have a use for it or cannot gift it. So making this was also a way to teach myself I don’t always need a reason to justify creating something. That sometimes creating for the sake of creating is okay. Maybe, that’s the whole point.

This project served as a reminder that I can learn new things. What a great discovery, I know. But for someone who feels behind in life on pretty much anything, knowing that I can just decide to pick up a new skill and learn it is a really comforting thought.

The Making Of

Materials, time and cost

• Beige mercerized cotton
• Brown mercerized cotton
• 1.75mm crochet hook
• Florist wire
• Amigurumi stuffing
• Brown cotton jersey
• Purple viscose jersey
• Red viscose jersey
• White cotton poplin
• Water-soluble stabilizer
• Brown faux leather
• Brown craft foam
• HTV purple vinyl
• Craft glue
• E600 glue
• Hot glue
• Sew-on snap buttons
• Chipboard
• Cardboard
• Aluminum foil
• Canvas fabric
• Acrylic paint
• Silver studs
• Velcro
• Sewing threads

I spent approximately €55 for this project (though I already had a few things at home - glue, cardboard, velcro and more). The most money went to the crochet pattern to make the body. And I am left with plenty leftovers for future projects, so it’s not too bad.

I tracked the time I spent working on this thing just out of curiosity, because I knew it would be some crazy number: 162 hours and 45 minutes over the span of 6 months. Basically, had I worked non-stop for an entire week without ever stopping, I would have finished it in little over 6 days. Insane. So insane that I’m second guessing whether this time tracker worked properly, in fact. But anyway, who cares. Let’s get to the process.

I’m going to divide this into four parts:

1. The body - crochet
2. The head - Art Attack (you know the TV programme from the late 90s? That one)
3. The clothes - sewing
4. The accessories - more Art Attack

The body - crochet

To be honest, the crochet part was the most boring, probably because there wasn’t much learning involved and crocheting the same stitch in the same color for days… well, my brain doesn’t like that very much.

It took me a while to find the right pattern for this, because I wanted muscle definition and a build that could resemble Gale’s as closely as possible. After so many dead links, this is the pattern I bought.

I don’t recommend this pattern to beginners, and to be honest I only recommend it if you’re able to figure out on your own things that the pattern might not say or not explain clearly. Also, at the time of writing, the pattern also contains a couple of mistakes, unfortunately. That said, if you’re able to work around an uncooperative pattern, I absolutely recommend it because the end result is incredible. Granted, mine is not perfect (good luck keeping a consistent tension with a 1.75mm hook and tiny stitches in the round), but the result is exactly what I wanted. Gale has muscles! You can definitely play with the amount of stuffing to get the look you want.

Fun fact: as I wanted to use yarn I already had in my stash, I initially started working with weight 2 yarn - the pattern calls for weight 0. I was okay with making it bigger until I made the leg and realized how much bigger it would be:

For reference, that’s a 14” laptop. The leg itself was about 20cm, I would have had a huge Gale had I continued with that! So I bit the bullet, bought the ultra thin cotton and restarted the limbs:

I know they kind of look huge in the second picture as well, but I promise there was a big difference. Once the body was done, I made an armor out of florist wire - I loosely followed the (admittedly not great) instructions in the pattern and looked at some YouTube videos to see how people were making it. I stuffed it, and then tested some cool poses.

The head - Art Attack

After I crocheted the head and a wig cap in brown, the first thing I got out of the way were the eyes. Which I made twice because the first pair was too big for the doll. The second pair came out less beautiful but better in size. In hindsight, I wish I had done a size in between those two attempts.

To make the eyes, I grabbed a scrap of canvas fabric I had and painted the shapes using acrylic paint and… actual eyeliner to draw the lash line because it was much more precise than using the brush I had. I haven’t used it in ages, don’t plan to and it’s probably expired, so that was a nice way to use a drop of it 😂.

Once the paint was dry, I applied a couple of coats of white craft glue to the back side, letting it dry for about 24 hours in between coats. That allowed the fabric to become stiff and so I cut the eyes, which I hot-glued to the crocheted head (that was a bit of a nightmare, hot-gluing at such a tiny scale isn’t easy). I then crocheted the beard: I used this YouTube video as a general guide but altered it to better match the shape of my doll; embroidered the mouth and brows.

The hair

This deserves its own section. God that was a journey. I followed this YouTube video to get an idea of how to place strands of hair on the wig cap. Initially, I did it exactly as this person does in their video: I pulled two strands of hair in every stitch. I had assumed that with such fine cotton, I would need more hair. Boy was I wrong.

This created way too much bulk, and no matter how much I staggered the strands and sections, I really disliked the result.

So I did it again, still pulling two strands per stitch but creating more spaced out sections. Still hated it. I honestly lost track of how many times I restarted it. I also realized I had another problem: the strands were too short to be able to style them in a top knot.

So I cut some brand new strands that were twice as long as the ones I was working with and I started the process again, using the longer strands on the front and sides, and the shorter on the back, on the top and wherever there was a bald spot. However, this time I pulled one single strand per stitch and tried to be more patient in creating the sections.

I really, really took my time with it: I added about four strands on each side, then pinned the wig cap to the head to test the placement, drape, bald spots, everything. Then unpinned and continued with the same process until it looked good enough.

It was then time for curls! So, once it was time to curl the hair I realized I messed up. 😂

Because to get a good yarn curl you want to use acrylic, not cotton. I sure as hell wasn’t going to buy acrylic and redo everything, so I had to find a way to curl cotton. The method I ended up using seems okay and, at the time of writing it’s already been about a month and the curls are still there. Will it hold forever? I have no idea.

Okay, so first I ran some experiments to try out different methods, if you’re interested you can read more about them in my Mastodon post here. The working solution I went with was to mix craft glue and water and apply it with a cotton bud to the strands wrapped around a toothpick. Honestly, the hardest part was clipping the ends of the strands to the toothpicks.

I quickly realized I would have needed to do this in batches and I needed some sort of stand to keep the wig up, otherwise the hair would have gotten glued to whatever surface I was using. Now, I had no wig stands, no doll stands, nothing that could even remotely be called a stand. I started pacing around my house like an idiot trying to find a solution, and I was panicking a bit because I couldn’t come up with anything.

At some point, finally, a lightbulb lit up in my brain:

• I crocheted a random ball with scrap yarn and pinned the wig cap to the ball
• I grabbed a plastic cup I had around, one of those with a lid and straw
• I covered it with plastic wrap to protect it from the glue and made a hole for the straw
• I added an elastic to create some tension that would prevent the straw from rolling around
• Since the straw was huge (about 1cm diameter), I grabbed a tunisian hook I didn’t even know I had (thanks, grandma’s stash!) and slid it in the straw
• I then hooked the ball to the hook
• I suddenly had a perfect wig stand

Here, admire my extremely ugly but absolutely functional monstrosity:

Not to brag, but I felt so good about myself that day 😂.

Anyway, I started from the lower layer of hair and every day I glued about 5-6 strands, leaving them to dry for at least 24 hours. The 24 hours were likely overkill but I didn’t want to risk it.

Surprisingly, it only took me about a week to curl all the strands, maybe even less. However, I did not curl the longer hair that were meant for the bun, mostly because I didn’t want Gale to have perfect curls everywhere but wanted a more natural look instead.

Once the curling was done, I pinned the wig cap to the actual doll head. Then, I gave the hair a light brush and started working on the hairdo. I created a middle part by sewing the front strands behind the ears - this is not very character accurate, but during my previous attempts I had realized a crochet doll with no parting just looks wrong. And then I used the longer strands to create the bun, tying it with a clear elastic. Once I was happy with the result, I started cutting the longer strands to match the length of the other shorter strands. And the hair was completed!

It’s been a challenge, and getting Gale’s hairstyle right with yarn isn’t easy. I’m happy with the result even if it’s not a 1:1 match.

The clothes - sewing

The sewing process is where I learned the most. Before this project, my sewing experience consisted in a pair of PJs shorts (badly) made out of an old bedsheet, and some minor alterations to a dress I wore to a concert. That’s it.

Surely the most logical thing is to find patterns for clothes that resemble the references as much as possible… right? Surely, there must be dozens of patterns for doll-sized wizard robes. That’s the stuff people sew everyday!

I obviously didn’t find anything that looked even remotely like what I wanted (granted, I only looked at free patterns because I wanted to keep the cost of the project contained). So I drafted my own patterns and, it turns out, making patterns is not as terrifying as it looks. Now, are they perfect patterns? No. But they get the job done, and that’s fine with me. Let’s go step by step.

The fabric choice

I wish I had some wisdom to share here but, honestly, I just winged it (and you can clearly see that 😂). I knew I wanted something with elastane in it because I wanted to be able to put the doll in different poses. I simply looked at what the fabric store had that matched this criteria and also matched the colors as closely as possible, and that’s how I ended up with cotton jersey for the trousers and viscose jersey for the rest.

Getting the color right was honestly very hard and I’m impressed it ended up matching so well, considering I went by pictures on a website. I already had some cotton poplin at home and used it to create prototypes before cutting the good fabric.

The trousers

The trousers were easy to make thanks to this this YouTube video I followed: I did exactly what they do to take the measurements and draw the pattern. It mostly worked out, though the prototype I made was slightly too large on the waist. Also the stitches came out horrible, because I couldn’t sew (still can’t).

Anyway, once I had the prototype, I felt confident I could make the adjustments to the pattern and cut on the good fabric. But I encountered another problem, what quickly became the bane of my existence: my machine kept eating the jersey at the edges, despite me using a ballpoint needle. I actually had to throw away the first cut on the good fabric because it got stuck so deep inside the machine that it tore when I pulled it out. I wanted to cry 🥲

I tried every method I could find online but nothing worked, except for one: using tissue paper underneath the fabric. However, this meant that the tissue paper would get sewn on one side of the fabric and, look, maybe I was the problem, but I wasn’t able to get it out of the stitches completely. I tried wetting it, using tweezers to remove the fragments, but some residue was still there and it bothered me.

But then I found a working solution: using a water-soluble stabilizer I had bought for an embroidery project. The machine didn’t eat anything and the stabilizer was completely removed under running water. Now, I am not in love with this method because I would have preferred not to wash every single piece (I’m impatient + terrified that the jersey, especially the purple, would lose color… which is exactly what happened and I ended up with a pink stained white towel), but it worked so I’m not complaining.

This time around, somehow my stitches came out nearly perfect, too. Gale’s actual trousers do have some sort of decoration on the legs but, honestly? Most of the legs are covered by the robe so I didn’t feel like attempting complex techniques for something that is barely visible.

The robe

So, like I mentioned earlier, on the internet there aren’t really patterns for wizard robes that are even remotely similar to Gale’s. And my garment construction skills were below zero at that point (not that they’re much above zero now, LOL). While I decided I was going to draft the pattern myself, I had no idea how such a garment gets made. Turns out, it’s not too hard.

I started searching for people who cosplayed Gale, to look at their pictures and try to get an idea of how the robe was constructed. I found a gold mine. I found this Reddit post from this super talented cosplayer who made their own outfit and shared the build book! If you ever come across this post somehow, THANK YOU. You saved me.

Reading about their process and looking at the pictures of how they cut the fabric was of immense help. I started sketching the three pieces for the robe: a back panel and two front panels. I then tried to convert the sketch into a pattern using the doll’s measurements. There were many many fails, but this was genuinely the part of this whole process when I had the most fun.

For a few days my routine was: wake up, draw a pattern fixing the mistakes of the previous one, cut the test fabric, sew the test fabric, test the garment on the doll, curse at the winds, repeat. I made four (I think) lab coats - what my sister called the prototypes - and five versions of the pattern.

The hardest part was to figure out the right armhole curve for the side seams, it was basically just trial and error. Getting the A line shape of the robe was also a bit challenging, mostly because I had no idea whether the flare should be on all three panels or just the back. I was under the impression that the cosplayer had only added it to their back panel, though it was hard to be sure from the pictures. In the end I ended up adding the same amount of flare to all three pieces.

Sewing was a nightmare at first. While the stabilizer helped, the purple fabric was infinitely more slippery than the brown one and would not stay put. The two layers shifted under the presser foot and so the stitches were just bad (my cut was also quite imprecise, which didn’t help. But more on that later). I redid it countless times until I got something that was good enough even though it wasn’t really respecting the seam allowance 😅.

One or two days later, my sister casually mentioned that her Cricut machine could cut fabric, and that she already had the mat and blade needed. Awesome! I could cut the smaller pieces with it. But then I thought: “okay, but if I were to cut the robe panels with the Cricut they’d come out clean and precise and the overall look would be way more polished”. In hindsight? I’m not too sure that made a difference 😂. But that’s what I did.

However, first I needed to draw the pattern digitally. Turns out, having a designer for a sister helps, because I was able to borrow her iPad and a great vector software: Affinity Designer. I had never used it before and so naturally I spent a good hour cursing at it as I tried to learn it, but after that it was (mostly) smooth sailing. I had fun drawing the pattern like that.

I have to admit, writing all of that out makes me feel like I am a bit insane to have done all of that for a “stupid” doll, but I thrive on this shit. Not sure what that says about me.

Anyway, once the pattern was done, I was ready to cut the fabric with the Cricut, and when arranging the fabric on the mat I realized several problems about my previously hand-cut robe:

• I had cut it off-grain. The most stretch was supposed to be horizontal on the doll, but at some point I messed up and cut it vertically.
• When I washed the fabric to remove the stabilizer I hung it to dry and, well, it’s not a good idea to hang stretchy fabrics. I can’t say for certain that it stretched crooked, but I highly suspect it because once I tried it on the doll it looked extremely uneven in length and, while my cut was bad, it wasn’t THAT bad.

So my perfectionism-induced decision to recut the fabric proved to actually be the right thing to do because the first version was all kinds of wrong.

Anyway, I had the Cricut cut the fabric and had my perfectly cut panels! Then I wanted to cry because I had to sew the top seams again 😂. However, this time around I pinned the hell out of the two layers of fabric and it went SO much better. The seams came out 99% perfect, that 1% being a little shift in the fabric that caused a tiny gather, but it’s barely visible. Besides, the seams got covered by more fabric later, so… why did I even care at all?

I did not sew the side seams until much later in the process, after sewing all the little pieces that had to be attached to it. However, in order to test the fit, I did a basting stitch to temporarily close the sides. I had always assumed basting could only be done by hand for some dumb reason, but I realized the machine can do it too, and now it might be my favorite thing.

Since the cosplayer’s pictures were of great help to figure out the pattern, here’s a picture of what my panels ended up looking like in case it might be helpful to anyone out there:

The diamond pattern piece

Again, bless the cosplayer’s build book because they shared a picture of the shape that worked for them for the patterned part of the robe, and that allowed me to have a starting point for mine.

I first replicated their shape on paper, based on the doll’s measurements. Then I placed the piece of paper on the doll wearing the robe, and made adjustments as needed. I cut the piece with the Cricut, and then it was time to make the diamonds.

Before even starting this project, I assumed this would be the easiest part. I would use my sister’s Cricut and HTV vinyl, and diamonds are a common shape so it would take ten minutes to prepare a pattern. Boy was I wrong. I’m not going to go into too many boring details but importing SVGs into Cricut’s software has been a nightmare - something always ended up broken. In the end I converted the single diamond shape into a PNG, imported that one in the software and then manually arranged the rows and columns in a software that has no snap, no alignment, nothing. It’s a miracle it turned out okay. The cutting and ironing, thankfully, were painless, but all thanks to my sister who does this for her job on a daily basis.

I am not a fan of how this piece turned out on the finished garment, but I’ll try to be content. I think it needed a few extra millimeters, and I should have made the diamonds bigger to make them more visible. But it’s okay. Since it’s not very visible in the pictures of the finished doll, here’s a (half cut) picture of what it looked like before sewing it on:

Handling raw edges

So, um… what a mess 😂. This was the most frustrating part of the process. I really, really wanted a nice bias binding like Gale model has. But after many attempts and failures, I had to give up on the idea.

Apparently, it’s impossible to find tiny, doll-scale bias tape in the color purple. So I made my own bias tape following this YouTube video that shows how to fold the fabric to get long strips of bias tape. It came out good enough, but the problem is that sewing such minuscule strips at this scale turned out to be impossible. I went with 1.5cm strips to make it easier for myself and while that worked, the resulting binded edge was way too big and disproportionate to the pieces. Here’s an example:

This is only pinned and not sewn because at this point I knew I hated it and didn't want to waste my time. So, for the purple piece with the diamond pattern, I opted for a regular rolled hem. The problem was that the piece is TINY and full of curves, and this fabric hates my sewing machine… so I sewed the hems by hand. Which wasn’t too difficult, but my stitches ARE bad.

However, at this point I had to accept good enough is good enough and I’m working with a scale (or “sGale”, courtesy of my sister) that’s very challenging. In hindsight, maybe that 20cm leg wasn’t such a bad idea.

I sewed the brown piece on top, leaving the raw edges visible, and I know it’s disgusting, but that was the best I could do without wanting to rip my hair out. I’m just telling myself that given the BG3 setting, it’s only natural that the tailoring isn’t perfect. Gale’s been in battle a lot, okay?

_{’Imagination’ gif by nerdalmighty.}

I decided to keep the huge bias tape for the robe edges instead, because… well, because I had no seam allowance on that for a hem and didn’t feel like restarting everything. Plus, the bias tape on the robe doesn’t look as disproportionate as it does on the small pieces. Sort of. Trying to convince myself here.

Sewing the bias binding by hand took me something like 4 hours and by then my fingers wanted to fall off.

The collar

This was so unnecessarily hard, but mostly because I didn’t think it through at first 😊.

My initial plan for the collar was pretty simple: get some fusible interfacing, sew two layers of red fabric together. Done. That was also what the cosplayer did! But as it turns out, interfacing does not work well with jersey. Yes, I could have looked it up before trying.

So, plan B: I used craft glue on a piece of scrap canvas fabric - just like what I did to make the doll’s eyes - and once dry I sandwiched it between two layers of red fabric. It worked and I had my collar, so I sewed it on the robe… annnnnd I realized it was way too small. I know, I know, I should have seen it before sewing it, but I was very tired that day and broke my own rule not to work when I’m tired.

I unpicked the stitches and started over. This time, I used this Tumblr post as a reference for the shape. I cut two trapezoid shapes with seam allowance, sewed three sides, inserted a piece of canvas for structure, and sewed it to the robe.

It came out a bit too big for my liking, and I really wanted it to have purple bias tape as per reference, but with this size I decided to go for the sew and turn method to make it easier for myself. Do I love it? No. But maybe next time I won’t work at such a complicated scale (sGale). (There will not be a next time). (Maybe).

The accessories - more Art Attack

The belt and bracers

These pieces were relatively straightforward to make. I simply cut some basic shapes out of faux leather, attached velcro strips and then decorated them by hand.

The internet told me a Staedtler fine point marker would work on faux leather. The internet lied: the damn thing came off with a light wipe of my finger after 24 hours since application. Then the internet also told me waterproof eyeliner would work - another lie. Or, maybe, something’s wrong with my specific leather.

Anyway, after many attempts I painted the lines with acrylic paint, foregoing accuracy and going for vibes (meaning: I could not be very precise with the brush so the lines aren’t very good). I then glued tiny silvery studs I already had around, using E600 glue.

I don’t love how they look but if there’s one thing this project has taught me is that once many imperfect elements are combined together and you can actually recognize the character, it doesn’t really matter that they’re imperfect (my brain does not like this lesson, anyway).

I decided against weaving the faux leather like in the reference pretty early on in the process, because I thought at this scale it would be hard and look wonky. Now, considering all the hard things I’ve done at this scale, I think I could’ve made it work. But that’s a problem for future me if she ever wants to improve it.

The boots

I was extremely worried about this part and yet it was the easiest. I followed this YouTube video almost to the letter, though I made the base for the shoe out of two layers of cardboard glued together, and it was pretty easy. Granted, my boots look quite ugly because this doll has huge feet, but the vibe is sort of there and, most importantly, the doll can stand on its own.

Oh, and if you think you know how to lace a shoe from scratch and definitely do not need a step by step YouTube tutorial? You might be surprised.

The triangle thingies

Okay, I’m pretty proud of how this came out. Back in February when planning this doll, I looked at craft shops but could not find anything functional that would look right, at least not at this scale, so I knew I had to improvise.

I bought 7mm sew-on snaps, and sewed the bottom pieces to the left panel of the robe as you normally do. I then cut tiny triangles out of chipboard and covered them in aluminum foil. The triangles were glued to the top pieces of the snap (using E600 glue - will they stay glued on forever? Only time can tell), and I sewed the snaps right on the edge of the right panel of the robe using only one of the holes, leaving the red thread visible as per the reference.

As for the triangles that are sitting on Gale’s left shoulder, I made a hole in them with a needle to add the red thread, and then glued them on the robe.

Final thoughts

To be quite honest, once I had all the pieces ready I was fairly dissatisfied with the result. But once I sewed the head onto the body, dressed the doll with the robe and added all the accessories? I thought “okay, this is pretty cool”. The character is recognizable and while I do see every single flaw, I think it looks nice overall. It can stand and it can pose! And if I ever want to make a better robe, or make it alternative clothing, I can because none of the pieces are attached to the body and can be removed. Not that I plan on making it any more clothes any time soon. I need at the very least a three to five year break from this project 😂

I was also planning to add some blush or some sort of sculpting to the face, as well as add some silver in his hair. But truth be told, I am terrified to mess it up so I’m going to keep it as is.

It does feel pretty nice to have completed this project and, maybe most importantly, to have learned that I don’t always need a practical reason to want to make something. I cannot begin to tell you how important maintaining my creative drive has been during these past six months of dark and gloom. Whenever I worked on the doll, I felt happy and my mood improved, and when I felt exhausted at night it was the good kind of exhausted, you know?

I’m very happy. This guy will come with me as I move across countries in about a month’s time, and I don’t know why I have to attach so many emotions to a stupid doll but here we are.

Obligatory “if you made it this far” - no but seriously thanks for following along on this ridiculous journey. On my Mastodon you can find all the WIP posts I made as I was working on this thing if you’re interested. Feel free to reach out if you are attempting something similar and have any questions.

I’m gonna leave for a little family holiday now (not now now, tomorrow).