half-tied ribbons

making babies

• Posted by Kristy on July 7th, 2008 filed in the fam

ha! gotttttchhhhahaaaaaaa, didn’t i?

and they’re old fashioned star shaped ones.

i’ve noticed my craftiness comes and goes in cycles. i like em’ all: sewing, quilting, knitting, scrapbooking, papery stuff, hmmmm, what else, new to painting and drawing but like it…. so i haven’t sewn in a while but feel like sewing right now. a lot. abby and i spent sunday afternoon making three dolls, one for each of the kids and a gift for a special new baby. fun stuff!

edited: more about the dolls. the picture below is the basic star shape template to cut out the pattern. it’s pretty easy to freehand. these dolls were about 12 x 18 inch square of fabric folded twice. (or if you want a different front and back then just put the left of the fold of two different pieces of fabric). that way the left and top are both on a fold and the shoulders of the doll don’t have to be stitched unless you did a different front and back. so you stitch it up, leaving the head hole open. after you sew the star shape up you can add a little batting if desired. we added very little though, they’re very floppy. the face is an old t-shirt cut into squares (about 6 inches, stuffed tightly with batting and then tied up. after you tie it up like a popsicle, trying to smooth out the face side, you stick that in and hand stitch the collar around to hold it all together. the hat pattern is the triangle shape cut out. i made it a little taller and skinnier so it could be knotted also. you also fold under a hem and hand stitch it around the head, almost all the way down to the body on the back side, to hide all the wrinkly t-shirt fabric. then i just used acrylic paint for the face, dipping a pencil tip in to make the sharp dot eyes and dabbing around for the smile. you have to tie the knots in the arms and legs loosely at first, almost like the whole arm will be a knot, and then work them out tightly all the way to the ends.

i wish i had made mine a little larger, the small ones are hard to work with as far as the hats and knots, but cute for the new baby. and i had an idea to do later. it was to make the dolls out of special clothing. for example, a friend gave us a bunch of her daughter’s clothes. lilly is about to outgrow the mom’s favorite footy pajamas so i thought i would make a little doll for the little girl out of the jammies. thought it would be a neat way to keepsake special clothing and would make a special gift for that little girl. way better than a box of old clothes sitting around, i mean, not that old clothes are a bad thing, but just not useful (like a million dolls are, right?)

hope this helps, monica, and anyone else who’s interested. it’s pretty simple but takes some time, like most things!