Adventures in Doll-making

I've begun a little adventure in doll-making. I'm not sure what exactly set me off, perhaps the beautiful cloth dolls I'm seeing around the blogosphere, perhaps the Waldorf dolls that keep catching my eye, and certainly the final straw of finding this book on doll-making in my studio a few weeks ago. So, armed with this lovely book...

...and some natural muslin, beige flannel and chocolate flannel, I'm making a beginning. Now my ponderings are filled with musings about embroidery versus painted features, simple or detailed, hair styles, outfits...lots of fun!



The first few bodies are now sewn up and awaiting permanent features. Here they are with pins marking potential placement.


More dolls coming your way soon.

Some lunch box crafting

I finally found some nice sets of cutlery at the thrift store (knife, fork, teaspoon and soupspoon) for $1. The stainless steel is nice and sturdy and has a good weight. I've been wanting to make some designated cutlery roles for our lunch bags so that we wouldn't risk losing our everyday to the office when and if one of us forgot to bring them home. We try to avoid using disposable plastic to save on landfill. So now that I had the cutlery it was time for something to contain them. I took a little piece of a landscape print from my stash (a reject sample for the kitchen curtains) and matched it with some heavy upholstery linen remnant that I picked up for .25¢ a while back. stitched a little forest green twill tape into one of the rows of stitching and we now have neat and tidy silver-ware rolls that live in our lunch bags. Next on the agenda may be some little scrap muslin bags to toss the dirty silver-ware in when bringing it back home. I'll have to check the stash.

All in all this was a very easy project to whip up with no pattern, and we've both gotten lots of good use and nice comments from using these. And it makes for a little bit greener world to boot!