Wooden Gifts: Carving Coat, Collar, and Clothing Folds on Your Wooden Figurine

Hey everyone, this is Wooden Smile. In this blog post, we’re going to walk you through how to carve detailed clothing elements—specifically the coat, collar, and fabric folds. Learning these wood carving techniques will help bring your wooden gifts to life with more depth and realism.

Let’s start by trimming the pants down slightly, making them a bit shorter. At this point, you can pause and begin to define the relationship between the coat, shirt, and pants on the side with the straight arm. These foundational shapes are essential in quality figure detailing.

In this photo, you can see a small curved line starting from the back of the figure’s neck. That curve leads down to a small peak, then continues downward. Use a pencil to sketch out these lines on your wooden figure. Notice how the coat’s edge isn’t just a straight vertical line—there’s a small variation at the hem. The more of these little details and variations you include, the more lively and dynamic your hand-carved figurine will look—it won’t feel stiff or flat.

Once the guidelines are in place, start carving. Just like we did on the other side, first make a stop cut, then follow with a second cut to remove the excess wood. Carve along the drawn lines to shape the outer edge of the coat. These types of woodworking techniques help in adding natural movement to the figure’s clothing textures.

There’s a small visible corner of the vest on the left side. The centerline of the body runs right through the exposed vest, so go ahead and sketch that in. The centerline should fall directly below the nose—since the nose marks the midpoint of the body. From there, lightly sketch in the vest, necktie, and collar just to block out the basic shapes.

The knot of the necktie is shaped like an upside-down trapezoid and takes up a fair bit of space. Don’t forget about the collar either. In the photo, the collar looks like a small triangle, but remember—the collar wraps around the back of the neck. While the part in the back is narrower, it still needs to be included, since we’re working in 3D, not just copying a flat image. Finally, make sure the left and right sides of the collar are roughly symmetrical. Let’s clean that up a bit.

Now, make some basic marks to define these areas, and sketch the fold lines where the clothing flips over. Don’t forget to mark the parts of the coat that fold toward the back as well. 

If you’re not sure how the back of the clothing should look, here’s a tip: wear a similar coat yourself and scrunch it up behind your arm to study how it folds and moves. Think about how the coat bends and where it gets caught or pressed. What direction do the folds move in? What kind of tension shapes them? Observing this in real life can really help you understand how to carve the structure of clothing on your wooden figurine.