We make! umm I make!

With beginning my 3rd year of uni sapping absolutely all my time and energy!! I really wanted to find some time to do some sewing this year. Lot's of friends are having babies and theres the charity sewing I miss doing and some clothes I'd like to make and well I've missed sewing so very much!
So, for the rest of this year I am going to *try* to set aside 1 day a week to sew. I think it will be better for me to do something other than uni work, even though its art and I do love it too, some times it is just too much!
So to kick off my new resolve -I bought some books to spark my interest.  I will be making something from these books over the next little while.

Storybook Toys has some gorgeous dolls and puppets that I would love to make. I am especially enamoured with the hand embroidered faces, just gorgeous, really looking forward to it!

We Make Dolls has some quirky and fun little toys and is a combination of lots of different doll makers with different styles so I'm very very much looking forward to getting stuck into this book and making, well everything in there! The only thing I can see thats a little disappointing is that some of them say "make your own template" and don't provide the pattern piece..for the head and the ears! Thats really actually quite shitty! Especially since its the dog on the cover.

Really, I'll be back with some sewing, promise! ;)

Welcome to forgetfulville, population I forgot...

Sometimes I'm in a focussed rush of typing and blogging and pressing publish in moments, other times the post sits for days half done and i change it fifty times before i hit publish.
In my haste the other day to finally hit publish on a post that had been sitting there half done for several days, cursor blinking at me, goading me - I forgot to upload pics of the doll clothes I was talking about, thanks to a comment from Hilary over at Quilary for reminding me the pics weren't actually on the post.
Lucky they weren't deleted because I could have sworn I uploaded them to iphoto already, but hadn't! here they are, finally off the camera today.

Undies and head scarf. Undies from scraps of 80's knit fabric left over from a t-shirt mum once made me. Head scarf from a scrap of taffeta lining, I hemmed it using an embroidered daisy stitch from the machine and used some bias binding I had made that was leftover from another project. All fabrics from mum originally.

A collared crop top using some left over striped poplin that originally was on the back of the shelves in my sewing room.. I used a band of this for the elastic casing on the skirt. The floral is from mum, it was a small remnant of unknown light-weight synthetic fabric. You can also see her shoes, white felt, with an olive green rose bow attached.

A t-shirt made from scraps of 80's knit fabric left over from a t-shirt mum once made me. Shorts made from some heavy weight fabric, a bit like denim, but chunkier weave. Another scrap piece from mums house, I used it originally to make myself a backpack in the early 90's while I was still at school. the backpack was so heavy in itself, it wasn't much good for carrying things but it was handy for storing a sleeping bag that lost it's bag. I still have it somewhere.

Dress and bag. The orange fabric was a left over rom when Mum had made kitchen curtains that were in our house throughout the 70's-80's. Mum had always thought she would make the left over square into a matching tablecloth, but with the growth in the size of the family, they bought a bigger table, and the square wasn't big enough for the new table. I had used this fabric earlier this year to make some clothes for the Vietnam orphans, this is the last piece left, except for some bias I had made. The bag is a small piece of white striped fabric also from mum, lined with the orange which is also used for the straps.

Here is a bit closer look at the dress. The lace on it even came from mum, just enough left on a card for this dress. So did the white hair ribbons, already cut into appropriate lengths with the ends neatly trimmed into points, I wonder what she was going to use them for...

The doll she is completed.

So this year I am attempting a completely handmade Christmas. But I assume that as time runs out to Christmas, "completely" will become somewhat or mostly ;)
This will be our first Christmas without Mum and that's pretty awful. I hope by making something handmade from the many patterns, fabric, laces, ribbons, yarn and what-not that came from Mum, that everyone will have something from Mum this christmas.

I made this doll for my niece. It started out as a UFO from a year ago. I had got this far, and then buried it in a box, and several bags of UFO's. I found all it's pieces while tidying up and organising my sewing room!

I think the most time consuming thing about making it was the stitching around the thumbs. Each time I went to stuff it, it split. I had to sew it a number of times. This fabric wasn't the best choice. It frayed easily. I also stuffed up the order of things. Then I wouldn't have ended up in this turning out mess!

But eventually she came good, but the nightmare of stitching on the head was, well, ahead...

I avoided that job for such a long time! and in the end I just went for it, and it really stitched up in no time..what was I so afraid of!?!

By Friday she was ready for the fun part! I used this boucle style yarn from a spotlight sale for her hair. First the fringe, I measured the length i wanted, then doubled it (it helps to wind it around and around a piece of stiff card) then i used some kitchen silicon paper strips wrapped around the yarn and used the sewing machine to sew right down the middle of the yarn. The paper holds the yarn flat but together and it stops the sewing machine eating the yarn. It also tears off really easily around the stitches. I left it on to pin place it, then ripped off the paper and hand stitched each piece of yarn to her head along the same line as the sewing machine stitch. Then you flip the back sections of yarn forward over the front section and no stitches can be seen.

We ended up getting this freezing cold rain shower Friday, that turned into a really cold night. What better to do than pull out Buffy the Vampire Slayer boxed set and stitch on the rest of the hair. You follow the same procedure as with the fringe, but down the centre of the head, a bit like a crazy mohawk. The Boucle yarn hides any stitches. Then I selected every second or  so strands of the yarn and stitched them further down the head about ear level (if she had ears) and stitched them down. This way, even when my niece decides to un-braid the hair, the doll head will still be covered and not mohawked! but some of her lovely long hair will still free.

So this is what she looked like finished. 

She's very cute, I'd quite like to keep her, awww but my niece will love her! If I were to make her again, (which I will have to as I had cut out 4 of these at once) I would alter the thumbs to make them easier to sew. Also the soles of her feet were too big for her leg parts, so they would need to be altered. I would also change the face or remove the darts in the chin area, to me they just look wrinkly. 

What every doll needs is clothing. So this week so far, I have stitched up a dress, some shorts, top, skirt, handbag, shoes undies and a head scarf!

Now I'm exhausted and she is being wrapped up for christmas! Yay! one down, 20 more to go!

Also some exciting packages came yesterday that made me almost squeal and be overly, overly excitable when saying thank you at the delivery man, as he handed them over.... I believe he now feels that I am a weirdo...but never-the-less, One package came from olivia in Germany as part of a Swap-bot.com swap of craft leftovers.
It was an envelope filled with, yarn, stickers, knitting needles, an ornament kit, tape, beads, a stamp, pieces of fabric and a lovely postcard.

The second package was an order I placed ages ago from Bendigo Woolen Mills. They've been super-busy with a huge sale on.
It's 100% cotton, it's 4 ply, (very very thin and a bit scary for me) as I am a beginner knitter. I bought it to knit up some stuff for Garry's cousin who is having a baby in march. It's so very cute and pretty colours too.

I had not knitted rib before last night, I was learning and making heaps of mistakes, so last nights attempt was very very poor! today I will have to pull it all back and start again. The great thing about it is that it is not wool, and so it is not so icky and fluffy and warm to knit in this hot muggy weather we've been having the past couple of days.
I was so excited I started knitting it straight away, despite having not finished heaps of other things - I know I know!!
The pattern came form mums knitting stash, I photocopied it to keep the original nice. It is from New Idea magazine, March 1976 just a few months before I was born!! I don't know if Mum ever knitted it...I hope so! I am making this first one striped, because I love little stripes. It also means I can use all the colours at once!
That's what I've been up to:)