My baby is turning 4...

Four years has passed fast.  My bright, beautiful, imaginative girl is turning four in a week.  She asked me for a doll to be friends with the rag doll that I had made when I was a teenager that she plays with all the time.  That particular doll is named Lizzy and I had given it to my mother after I made it.  She saved it all these years and when I had Olivia, gave it back.  I scrounged the internet for the pattern and successfully found it and made a friend for Lizzy. This doll is unnamed.  I'll leave that honor to Olivia.  I hope she will enjoy her.  Olivia loves to imagine scenarios with her dolls and has a running dialogue with them most of the time!

Chloe Grace, painted by Joyce Mathews, in an overalls outfit that I have made as a prize for a photo contest on Our Little Darlings.

Sweater Weather

It's been a warm fall so far, but today is a little cooler, so Chloe Grace (painted by Joyce Mathews) is wearing a hand-knit sweater over her romper.  The sweater pattern is from the Etsy Shop Sewsallday and the romper pattern is from the Etsy Shop Buttonsnbutterflies.






I made matching shoes!  I used Sissy Lingle's pattern and tutorial and it was great, as usual.




I will likely list this outfit in my own etsy shop in the near future!

A Waldorf Doll

This doll took me forever to make but was worth all the effort.  My lovely friend Laura gave me the wool to stuff her with.  I used the Little Amigo pattern in Growing Up Sew Liberated.  It was easy to follow and came out nice, so I'm happy with the result.  I'm hoping to make another doll sometime, although Olivia has way too many dolls already, at three years of age!  Her birthday was last week and she named this doll Emily Elizabeth.  She seems to enjoy her!  If you click through there are a few more photos of her in my Flickr account.

My niece turned 14 last week and I made her a zip pouch with some of my favorite fabrics.  She and I have the same favorite color.  I used Lecien Flower Sugar 2015 for this pouch and put a little bead or two on the zipper.  I stuffed it with candy for her and mailed it off.



I have a great project in the works involving a Little Darling but it has unfortunately gotten bumped to the bottom of my priorities (sadly) for a few weeks because I have been playing catch up on a lot of other things!  Hopefully I will get to work on it this week.  Today I built a whole swing set for my daughter, all by myself, so I'm proud I got it accomplished and she loves it so it was worth it!

Wren in a spring outfit

Wren in her spring separates outfit.  The outfit is a prize for a photo contest on Our Little Darlings and the shoes were made from a great kit by Sissy Lingle.

Doll Sewing and Random Pretty Things

My old camera finally died.  It was just an inexpensive Canon Powershot camera with minimal frills but it always took good photos!  The shutter button quit working, so I decided to get a new one.  It's a more powerful Canon Powershot SX520 HS and it has more functionality, a bigger lens, and takes nice photos!  Here are the first few I took:

Littlefee Ante in a new dress made with fabric I received in a swap:




Devon Marie (Little Darling by Dianna Effner, painted by Nelly Valentino) [I think this photo would have come out better against a lighter background. The face of the doll is a little washed-out.]


And here I was interested in seeing how the macro focus function does and got some beautiful photos of the mums I was using as a background.  Any of these photos can be clicked on to get the larger version at Flickr.

Some summer projects and photos

I've had a busy summer with not a lot of project time, but the pouch above was made from Bonnie and Camille's Daysail fabric with a pattern from Amy Sinibaldi's book Sweetly Stitched Handmades.  The embroidery is my own design.




This potholder was made for my kitchen and it's from a vintage pattern.  I made it with Dishie yarn from Knitpicks, which I have found to be the BEST worsted weight cotton ever!



This little kitten was fostered and adopted out of our clinic this summer.  He was a cute one!  If anyone knows anybody in need of a cat to adopt, I'm currently fostering five or six lovely adult cats.  :)




My garden has been a flower bonanza this year, but also sort of weedy!




And lastly, this fabric needs to be made into something!  It's Bloom and Bliss and I love the colors.  The print scale, for the most part, is perfect for small projects like doll dresses but also for larger ones.  This is a fat-quarter bundle but I may need to get yardage of a few prints, too.

Another hexagons project

I'm loving the book Sweetly Stitched Handmades by Amy Sinibaldi.  This is the second project I've made from it for a sew-along on Instagram and I'm having such a good time with it.  This particular project seemed to take me forever and I wasn't sure of my fabric choices until after I got them together and now I love them!  I'm not usually a fan of red, but I like this shade of red when combined with aqua.  I liked it so  much I made a special trip to the craft store yesterday to get ruby red #10 crochet cotton so I could do the lace on the edge.  Now I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it...either keep it and use it myself (it's technically a mug rug and a teabag will fit in that little pocket there that's labeled "Tea Time") or save it and gift it for Christmas to one of my family members?  I'm not sure any of them would like the colors, though...I'll have to think about it more!

This was a good project to do with little Olivia around because she could play while I did the handwork parts in the living room (the hexagons, appliqued leaves, quilting and edging were all hand done).   Olivia's getting old enough now that she can self-amuse for a while, which is great!  She'll play with my 1980s Care Bears for hours while I sew on my sewing machine in the craft room.  The Care Bears live up there just for that purpose and when I was about 20 I bought myself the Care Bears Care-a-lot Playset in mint condition and she's loving it.  It's not in mint condition any more, but oh well!  She's having such a good time with it!  Here she is with her bubble machine last week.

Olivia's quilt is all finished!

I finally finished it up completely.  It's made from patterns from Alicia Paulson's book Embroidery Companion and it was a lot of fun to make, but took me forever.  The majority of the fabric is 1930's reproduction prints.  I attempted to photograph it by clothespinning it to the lovely goat fence, but Anza tried to eat it so that didn't work too well!  All the photos are also on my flickr, so you can click to see them larger.

Full Quilt:

Closer views below of the embroidery:

My favorite color....

Today I whipped up a doll dress in my favorite color, aqua, because I was having doll-playing withdrawal!  I found this piece of fabric at Joann's the other day.  It would be sort of low quality for quilt making because it's thin, but it works really well for doll clothes!  It's a simple pattern but the dress just sets off Chloe's eyes so well. This doll is another Little Darling, painted by Joyce Mathews, and she's just gorgeous.  I adore her painting style so much.

Another project

I have been working on this quilt since before Olivia was born!  I was all set to get it done, and then she came three weeks early and I didn't finish it up till just recently.  It's from Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion book and I used 1930's reproduction fabrics to finish it.  I have to quilt it and then bind it but the majority of the work is done!  Click through for a bigger view.

Hand sewing lately...

I haven't been doll sewing lately.  I've been working on some quilts.  I also have been making myself a new tote bag.  I am using Pam Kitty fabrics that I have hoarded for a few years to make some hexagon flowers to put on the front of the tote.  This type of piecing is perfect for warm days on the deck.

My Birthday Presents

This is Chloe Grace, painted by Joyce Mathews.  She was kindly sold to me by a fellow member of Our Little Darlings.  She's gorgeous!  She kindly also shipped her fast so she arrived on my birthday and she included the lovely dress she's wearing, made by Trish.  I was a lucky birthday girl!

I also was a lucky birthday girl to receive this great serger!  I have practiced a little bit with it but still have lots of learning to do!

On a happier note...

I got a new lightbox.  I took some photos of Janie, a Little Darling (sculpted by Dianna Effner, mold #2, painted by Lana Dobbs).  She's wearing an "experimental" dress.  I used some plain white muslin because I didn't want to waste any white batiste, but in the end I think it came out alright and  maybe is better in muslin because it's not so sheer!  I used a Rosemary Ionker pattern from one of her books.  I wanted to try pintucking combined with hand-embroidery.

Merry Christmas!

This is the close up from the little outfit (sweater and dress) I made for my swap partner on Our Little Darlings.  This little doll sets it off perfectly!

Fall is rolling right along...

Inspired by fall, this dress was made from one of my own patterns.  The yoke has a bit of silk ribbon embroidery on it.

Bathing Beauty

Here is Anne of Green Gables, temporarily rewigged to be a modern girl.  Anne is a Little Darling, painted by Geri Uribe.  She's wearing a green gingham bathing suit that I designed.  I particularly like the ruffles on the behind!

End-of-Summer Picnic Pretty

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Here's the new girl again in a sundress I made from cotton gingham.  I used the technique of chicken scratch embroidery on the hemline and front to dress up the pretty gingham.  I may list this dress on ebay or etsy if I decide I can part with it!

Here's a hemline detail:

New Girl

Isn't she lovely?  She's painted by Nelly Valentino and is so pretty.  Already, she's made a friend, Anne, painted by Geri.  I need a name for the new girl!  Anne's little bathing suit has ruffles on the rear end and I'm quite proud of it!  I drafted the patterns for it myself.  The new girl's outfit is made from a pattern by Nedra (www.sewnedra.com).  More photos are in my Flickr account (click the link over on the right).

Hankie Outfit

Willa was my model for the Hankie Challenge on the Our Little Darlings Yahoo Group.  I used a white sheer vintage hankie with pretty white embroidery to pleat for the top and I embellished it with coral embroidery. The skirt is a pleated coral floral hankie which is attached at the waist to a crocheted waistband that closes in back with a button.  It was fun to make.  I used a scrap of the skirt fabric to make a bow for her hair.  Just some basic info about the doll:  Dianna Effner's Little Darling Sculpt #1 with a hand-painted face by Lana Dobbs (she was a custom order).