I saw the idea for these dolls in an old book of softie patterns, mainly beanies, from the 80's that I found lurking on my shelf when I was searching for simple sewing books to bring to my sister-in-laws. There was a pattern but it was a bit '80's' so I made up my own simple ones, a doll for Esme and a robot for Laurie.
The robot has no arms as I wanted to finish it quickly and my interest had waned by the end of the night, I thought I could help Laurie colour his and add drawn-on arms, but when I gave it to him he so wanted to draw on it by himself I resisted the strong urge to interfere with his work. I think he did fantastically too, for a 2 1/2 year old who isn't drawing anything other than squiggles when given a blank sheet of paper, he drew eyes, mouth, nose, ears, feet and arms all by himself with very little prompting and seemed to really enjoy it too.
Of course Esme was in her element and quickly whizzed up features for her doll, as I knew she would love to do.
before
after
They are sewn very simply on the machine (my sister in laws new sewing machine!) using unbleached calico, and then the children used fabric pens to draw. We got our pens cheaply at ELC but they are pretty easy to get hold of elsewhere too.
They were at least partly made with me working babe-in-arms like this:
3 comments:
What a lovely idea!
They look wonderful :)
What cool project! I still end up sewing "babe-in-arms" from time to time, only it's "busy-fingered-two-and-a-half-year-old-in-arms" now.
Brilliant idea, We can use those fabric pens you gave gwenny for her birthday, thats when she's finished colouring all the blank t shirts you gave her.
Post a Comment