Thursday, July 14, 2011

Waldorf-y Not-So-Knotty Dolls

Sam's mom, Memaw, bought Ailey one of those little blankets that has a bunny head attached to the middle and it rattles.  For the longest time, she didn't care anything about it.  Then, about a month or so ago, she got very concentrated on it and started carrying it around all the time along with two other blankets.

Now Brea has begun to grab at her blankets lately, so I thought it would be good to get her something like Ailey has, but I wanted something more like this:


Organic Star Blanket Doll - photo

or this:

Bamboo Organic Velour Knotty Doll


After seeing how much they are, which isn't bad, of course, I decided that the construction was easy enough for me to attempt, instead of buy one. :)  I've had a stash of that type of fabric for a long while now and really didn't know what I wanted to make out of it.  I googled to see if there was a free pattern or tutorial and I found this one:  Knotty Doll Tutorial  and Knotty Doll Pattern

Knotty Doll (download pattern seperately)

So, I was determined to make it myself now that I was armed with pattern and instructions.  I decided to make three, one for Ailey because I knew the moment she saw it in doll form she would want one and continually take it away from Brea (she's done that with the 3 stuffed animals that are Brea's), one for Brea, of course, and one for my niece Lauren because I still owe her a birthday present from the first part of last month.  That's right, I rock my mad aunt skilz with late birthday presents. :)

The main construction of them, body and head didn't take very long, but I hand-stitched the head on and then hand-stitched the hat on the head.  That took some time.  When I put together the first one, Sam looked at it and asked where its face was and I must admit, it did look rather creepy without a face.  I went ahead and embroidered one on and then I decided that there needed to be some sort of a border around the hat because it looked more like a do rag.  So, I hand-stitched a ribbon border on as well which equaled more time.  Oh, and my fingers are pretty sore where I held the needle.  Here's what they looked like before the face:



The hands and feet are not knotted.  I couldn't get the knots small enough and the dolls looked like squatty bodies!  Not quite the look I was after. 

Here they are with faces: