Wee Wonderfuls

Stitched in Time Nutcracker dolls

They need to come up with a name for spending the Friday after Thanksgiving sitting at home working on handmade presents. "DIY Friday"? "You don't really need it, even if it is on super sale, so sleep in and spend a leisurely day knitting Friday"? Whatever it's called, I was able to spend a good part of it inside snuggled up with my sewing basket finishing these two nutcracker dolls from Alicia's new book, Stitched in Time. They are presents for two new babies on my list and I think they just turned out so cute and I love them. Thanks Alicia!

If you're making presents this year definitely check out Alicia's book. It has lots of really cute gift ideas. Actually, just lots of cute all around! I've been tapping my fingers since I pre-ordered my copy this Summer and I'm so happy to have it in my hands. The cover alone is enough for me, but to have a whole 160 pages of Alicia at my fingertips is simply wonderful!   

Happy Thanksgiving

Illustration by Gyo Fujikawa from Everywoman's Family Circle, December 1959

KCL girls and a list

I know I should be working on the cooking holiday today but I'm trying to avoid the trip to the inevitably mobbed grocery store so I'm instead working on my Christmas list. I've written and rewritten my handmade gift list a hundred times already. Definite gifts-to-be include some dress up items, a few belated new baby presents, a tree skirt and well, I guess I can't really say the last thing here. I have a feeling this unnamed thing is the one gift that's going to be the biggest time suck of all. And since listening to me ramble on about lists is as dull as can be, here are some cute pics from the KCL flickr group to perk things up...

Anna's Ella

. And wow, check out her Christmas project in Homespun magazine!

Marie's Dorothy

love those red sequined shoes!

overdue library book

A Treasury of Scandinavian Design by Erik Zahle, c. 1961.

who needs toys you can actually play with anyway

I've got a few new additions this Christmas to the collection of paper dolls I had as a kid that I'm gradually amassing for Phoebe.

Early America. (I showed these to Mom and she said, oh your grandmother must have bought you those and I bet you hated them. She's probably right. Not roller disco enough.)

The Ginghams were my favorites. My sister had two sets and I had two, if I remember right. This is the first box I've won. Gingham fans are very competitive! Also a 1970 Barbie wedding set that came with a lot I won.

These I didn't have as a kid but I just love them. 1950s Snow White.

and I'm still expecting a little something, something much more glamorous than Early America. Can't wait!

 

Cinciallegra

How could I resist this hair! This is the Pullip I had to have. And her original costume is amazing. I'll have to take photos of her in all her splendor soon. Here she is in her new Fall Sugarmag outfit. A little more classic than her sister's. She's the Grace Kelly of the two. Maybe she's the Blair and the Blythe is the Serena? Just not sure yet.

please meet my blythe

Here she is my new Blythe doll, Roaring Red.

She's an ADG Blythe, which are reproductions of the original 70s Blythes. The Takara Blythes are the ones that are made in Japan and are much more expensive. I got the cheaper ADG version, you know, babysteps down the Blythe rabbit hole. I've always been fascinated by the Blythe world. All the outfits, the customization, the photo shoots. I'm still just figuring out what's going on. I don't have a name for this gal yet, or a personality in mind really. She's sporting a new SugarMag outfit for Fall from TIB but no shoes, poor girl. And I don't know what to do with this hair. I'm reading about customization and trying to figure out what all is involved. I think she might need new lips or something. And glasses! She definitely needs glasses. I've ordered a Doll Coordinate Recipe magazine so I can start sewing outfits for her. I really need to figure out how to pose her. It took me 15 minutes just to get her to sit on the table edge. She's so top heavy. Lots to figure out and so much unbelievable eye candy. I'll just send you now to one of my favorite Blythe designers, jamfancy. I mean come on! It's amazing. I can seriously hardly stand it.

And I'll tell you what else, Blythe is a gateway. I've already discovered what my downfall is really going to be, Pullip dolls. She has such an unbelievably sweet face. She sucked me right in. Can you guess which one I bought?

christmas wishes quilt specs

Here's the stitchettes quilt again. I wanted to post some more pics and details for anyone interested. The quilt is lap quilt size, good for snuggling under or draping across the bottom of a bed. The finished measurements are 63" wide x 60" tall. So that breaks down to eight 8" x 8" squares for the embroideries across bottom. Above that are 64" (I ordered 2 yards and trimmed the end to fit) of 44" wide fabric. Then there's a 4" strip across the top and 8" strip across the bottom.

The fabrics are... white with bells is candyland christmas by moda seems like it's sold out from fat quarter shop where I bought it, same with the red backing fabric from the same collection. They still have the blue which is Minny Muu Snowman.

For the quilting I dropped by feed dogs, put on my darning foot and did big bubble shapes over the non-embroidery sections. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I always wish my quilting looked neater but since I'm cramming it through my home sewing machine I'm just happy it works at all.

heidi

I found this Heidi in a purse doll at the all night flea market this Summer. Phoebe was interested in it for about 2 minutes and then on to something else so I put her up on a shelf to save for later. Thing is, now Phoebe can reach almost all our shelves including the saving them for later shelves. She unearthed Heidi yesterday and I just had to let her play with her because, check it out, they're wearing matching outfits!

Christmas Wishes embroidery patterns and quilt

Check out what I woke up to this morning... Oscar sitting under the Christmas quilt I finished last night. He was flipping through one of his toy catalogs. How appropriate is that! This little boy's dream bubbles didn't make it into the quilt though. I'm not a talented enough stitcher to embroider tiny little transformers or millenium falcons.

So this is the Christmas quilt I made from the Christmas Wishes embroideries. I'll need to wait for a brighter day to take some better photos but here you get the jist. I was really struggling with how to incorporate these embroideries into a quilt. After all that embroidering I didn't want to spend too much time piecing so I wanted something simple. I was thinking a traditional square patchwork of embroideries and prints but realized the embroideries were too small and was also feeling that was too boring. I had the embroideries all laid out in a row with printed strips between them and wasn't digging that and then realized what I wanted was to piece them right together with all the little dreamers all laying in a row. I cut the embroideries into 8" x 8" squares and sewed them together to form a strip of sleeping cuties and then did one big print on top, another 8" of a different print on the bottom and there you go. I quilted it with a bubble pattern and overall it was a pretty easy quilt to put together. I can get all the measurements and details along with the fabrics I used together in the next couple days and post it with some better photos.

So the Christmas wishes embroidery patterns are now in the shop. 8 designs in PDF format, 4 boys (robot, sock monkey, books & train) and 4 girls (tea set, dolly, scooter & sweets) for $8. We're offering them as PDFs for a few reasons. One, to keep costs down, two, so you can started on them right away and three, so you can easily customize them. Oh, and you can resize them this way too if you want, four. The designs will need to be traced with a transfer pencil and then ironed onto your fabric. There are a lot of little details in each design and this way, since you're doing the tracing and they are not iron on transfers, you can decide to cut out details or switch them with other designs, the one that looks the most like your wisher with what he/she is wishing for, whatever will work best for your project.