baby clothes!

Now that I have a new sewing machine I've been sewing a lot :D I made the little pinafore dress
and bloomers I shared on this post, I made a dress and bloomers for our 2 year old niece and I
made a dress, bloomers and little shoes for our brand new baby niece who is a week old now :)
I also made bows for all 3 things :)

Here is the dress I had shared before with its hair bow :) As I had said in the post I had

shared this dress in, I made this dress with an old McCall's pattern I had.

This is a close up of the bow :)

This is the dress I made for our niece Dezi :) with bloomers and bow.

I used some fancy flowery stitching on it :D The pattern I used for this dress was from

The Stitching Scientist.  She has a very good tutorial for making this dress.  The bloomers

came from Sewing Mama Raeanna.  It's a very good pattern and tutorial.

This is a close up of the hair bow.

This is the dress, bloomers and shoes I made for our newest baby niece :)

The dress pattern came from Shwin and Shwin :) She's got a good tutorial on there. The 

bloomers came from See Kate Sew, another good tutorial :) Last, the little shoes came

from Tao of Craft.  Great tutorial for the shoes on there :)

This is a close up of the head band i made for the baby :D

A great place for hair bow tutorials is The Ribbon Retreat.  They have very good pdf and 

video tutorials

Next I'm going to start sewing and cutting my Waldorf doll pattern pieces.  I'm excited about that

just need to buy more stuffing as I don't have enough.  I also have fun mail coming :D I'm waiting 

for some mohair yarn to make a wig cap from and the pellets I'm going to use to weight my doll 

yaay :D I can't wait :)

Busy Books :)

Some of my favorite projects I've worked on have been the busy books aka quiet books.
They are so fun to make.  It's fun to plan out what pages you want to use, plan how to put
them together, gather up all your supplies and then just create it all :) I'm sure some
people out there can whip one of these babies out really quick but not me :D  Busy books
take a little while for me but they are worth it :) and the kids love them.  I've made four of them.
I made 2 in 2014 and 2 last year.  The first 2 I made were different from each other.  Last years
were exactly alike because I was trying to finish them before we went on holiday.
I found so many quiet book page ideas on pinterest :)  These are some of my favorite ones:
Imagine Our Life
Maybe Matilda
ANDNEXTCOMESL
PA Country Crafts
bubbles & bobbins
forty-two roads
The Montoya Family
KRĒ-ĀT
Shill O'POP
how does she?
Empty Bobbin

Their ideas are awesome :) My busy books are mostly all made of felt.  One of the first ones
I made was for one of our little nephews.  It was made of 8 pages and it had 14 activities.

This is our nephew Ryan's book :)

The mailbox one was an awesome activity :) I loved making that one.  Was fun

making the envelopes and letters :)  That page came from here.  Some of the 

other pages came from links that I gave you in this post and others I saw pictures

on google images.  I made changes to some of them and a couple of them I 

made my own.

The second book I made was for one of our nieces in Texas.  Her older sister, Kylie, loves 

the book but she doesn't get to play with it much because sharing isn't Stella's strong point :D

I'm thinking of making Kylie her own for her birthday in May.  She'll be 7, so these books 

work for big kids too! :D  

Stella's book had 8 pages and 11 activities.

This is Stella's book :)

The pages from this book came from the links I shared in this post too. The purse activity

was fun and I looked at this page to help me with the play make up.  I came up with 

a couple of these on my own.  I came up with the animal sounds activity.  I'm sure there

is someone out there who's made a page like this but I didn't look for it and didn't see any.

I was thinking on what else I could put in the book and since kids like animals I thought

a matching game would be fun.  The shopping activity was another one.  I saw some of

those but my wife and I came up with our own version :)   

Last year I made 2 books and they were exactly alike.  Those books had 8 pages and 

14 activities.  Some of the activities came from the links I shared in this post. Some of

them have changes I made.  The frozen page I made up :D I got inspiration from a couple

on google images but I made it my own.  The Elsa doll pattern came from here. 

Here is one of the books :)

 

 

 

 

So far these are my only busy books but got another one getting planned in my brain and a

couple others I want to make for Christmas time :D  They are so much fun to make I

do recommend it.

Another Fabric Doll House

After I made my lovely doll house I showed you in my Little Fabric Doll House post, I decided to give another kind of house a try.  I'd seen another type of doll house that I thought was cute and would be fun to make.  This is the site I got the tutorial from U.K. lass in U.S. :)  It is a very good clear tutorial with pictures.  I made mine with fabric, felt, batting and plastic canvas and I made a little couch and bed for it.  I got help to make the little couch from here Thatch Cottage.  It's a very nice, clear tutorial.  The little bed was just a sponge I covered in fabric with a pillow I made out of felt and a little blanket.  I used my handy dandy BIGkick machine to make the flowers and some of the other appliques I put around the house.  For this little house I decided to use a bendy rope doll.  I got mine from this shop little oke dolls.  To make the bendy rope doll into an actual doll, I used the tutorial here myrtle and eunice.  It's a good tutorial with pictures.  My bendy doll didn't have a head though, so I made my own Waldorf style head.  There is a good tutorial for making a mini doll head here Atelier Barbara.  I made my little doll into a fairy :) I gave her a pink and white dress and pink wings made of felt.  I also made a unicorn made of felt.  He was very fun to make and also a bit challenging as I am not the best at sewing by hand.  I used ever helpful google to help me find a template or tutorial to make a unicorn and I found this one, horse pattern.  The pattern came from this site Echoes of a Dream.  I can't seem to find the tutorial or the pattern on the page anymore but I might be looking in the wrong place.  I'll share some pictures of my doll house, Lily the Fairy and her unicorn Maximus :)  You can see more pictures on my FB page, Etsy page or my Pinterest :)

Lily the Fairy

Maximus

Lily's house

I love Maximus :) 

Jointed dollies

I went looking for the pictures of all my old jointed dolls I made so I could put them on here.  When I decided I wanted to make a jointed doll I went on google looking for tutorials and I found plenty of them out there.  Here are several links that are very helpful :)

Fig and Me She makes gorgeous dolls and has a lot of very helpful information and tips.

Nestled Under Rainbows She's got a tutorial for making dolls and talks about how she created her own pattern, which made me realize I could give it a try as well :)

Doing Without She's got a tutorial and a free pattern.  I used this tutorial to learn how to make toes and fingers :) 

Pummbaeren This site has a great tutorial with pictures for making the head.

The Silver Penny This site has a good tutorial for the head and it also has a pattern.

Judi's Dolls She has a video showing how to do invisible jointing, which is what I wanted for my dolls.  I didn't want the buttons on the joints to show. 

Fretta This is another good head tutorial :)

Dolls Fever Another very good head tutorial with pictures.

Farmish Momma This is a link I shared in another post.  It's the tutorial I used when I started making my dolls :)  It's a good one. 

I got my jointed doll pattern from Sarahs-Dolls.  I made a few dolls with this pattern, but I decided to try and make my own pattern.  It was hard as I'd never done it before.  I measured plastic baby dolls.  I looked at how their arms and legs were shaped and went from there.  I'm still not happy with it and will continue to tweak it until I'm happy.  I want to make the legs longer and the feet as well.  I think the arms are a good length, but I want to make them thinner I think.  The body needs work as well.  I've not made one of these dolls in over a year.  When I tweak my pattern to my satisfaction I'll give it another go.  My favorite part of making the dolls is when I get to pick their eye and hair color.  My wifey helps me choose most of the time and she also chooses their names :)  I also love picking what I want to make them to wear.  I'd love to learn to knit so I could make them woolly hats and jumpers.  For now I just make them dresses, shorts, pants, underwear, nappies, socks, tights, shoes, jackets, hats, that kind of thing.  I thought I'd share some pictures of some of the dolls I made with my own pattern :) 

Honey the Bee :)  She was really fun to make.  I kept thinking of different dolls I could make and this little bee came to mind :)  I googled bee wings to get an idea of what to make her wings look like. I made her a black and yellow tutu and here is a very good tutorial on how to make your own no sew tutus sewmccool :) 

Honey

This is Noelle and Tilly.  All these dolls were put on my FB page and Etsy page, so when a lady saw Noelle she asked me to make her one with black hair. So I made Tilly for her.  They were made near the holidays so they have a Christmas angel outfit and Noelle also has a regular Christmas dress.  I love her little felt Mary Jane shoes.  If you google felt Mary Janes for dolls you'll find many tutorials and patterns.  Noelle is one of my favorite little dolls, her face to me was very pretty :)  Hopefully their owners are still happy with their dolls.

Noelle

Tilly 

One of the custom orders I had that made me the most nervous was an order made by a man for his wedding day.  He and I exchanged many messages about how he wanted the dolls to be.  In the end he was very happy and I was happy with my officer's cap! The gold buttons on his jacket were actually silver but I spray painted them gold. The groom's doll was the hardest to make but very fun :) I used these tutorials for an officer's hat to help me make mine Brass Goggles and Tracing Rainbows.

Very good tutorials with pictures.  

I didn't know if I would be able to do it but I liked how it all came together. The bride liked her surprise too :)

Officer's Hat :)

I'll share some more of my jointed dolls with you in my next post :)