Volks has come out with a new doll size! This doll size is known as "Chimikko" and premiered on Anya Forger. The Chimikko doll is for a kid roughly 4-6 years of age. The body has short toddler arm/legs, and according to Volks when it was announced would be based off of the Mini Dollfie Dream (tween aged?) doll but with shorter limbs.
I was really curious how this would come out. I was picturing a MDD torso with short arms/legs kind of like how the Mochi Asashi body has a regular torso but with giant legs that don't quite suit the rest of the body. I was pleasantly surprised!
Here I have an Imomo 1/6 (another doll I hadn't got quite to doing a review on), the Volks Chimikko body, and the Volks Mini Dollfie Dream.
As you can see, the Chimi and MDD bodies don't look anything alike. The torso is shorter, and chubbier with narrower shoulders. They seem to share hands/feet, but nothing else.
It looks a lot more like the other doll pictured, the Imomo 1/6 body! I ran the numbers and a Chimikko is between 122-127% bigger than an Imomo 1/6. That's incredibly close and these dolls will DEFINITELY be able to share patterns!
Yay! I love it when I have a couple of dolls I can group together into a new sewing size.
They do need a new sewing size, right?
Ok, this is where it's going to get complicated. If you're one of the people who's asked me about an Imomo in the past, you know the Imomos are decently close in shape to a RH doll. Between 110-120% bigger, and if you print PC sized patterns at 120%, you'll get a pretty good result.
This is because there's about 1cm of wiggle room built into every pattern. Up to 1cm bigger or 1cm smaller, most clothes will still fit and look fine with clothes made from the same pattern size. After you sew in closures this amount shrinks a lot, but before your snaps or whatever are sewn in, your clothes fit a bigger range than after.
However, when you're dealing with enlarging, the bigger the %, the bigger the differences are amplified. A Chimikko doll's measurements vary from 135% to 170% larger than a RH doll. That's way too big of a difference in measurements! Much more than a +/-1cm wiggle room.
When you place a Chimikko next to a 14" RH doll, you can see that they look more different than the two smaller dolls with the same proportions.
- Chimikko is a NEW doll size. She has narrower shoulders than MDD and an A-line torso.
- Chimikko and Imomo 1/6 will be in the same doll size.
- Imomo dolls can wear existing PC sized patterns if printed at 120%
- Chimikko CANNOT wear enlarged PC sized patterns.
What will the new pattern size be called? I don't know yet. I'm thinking about "Littles" because I already have a '1/3 Kid' size for MDDs.
Since Anya is a new doll with no clothes except the ones she came in, I'm going to see if I can get her started with something easy soon! When I do, I'll update this article with the new pattern size link.