Wednesday, February 16, 2011

YES, I HAVE A POLE UP MY BUM



I finished up the body of my girl last night. I wanted to get it done sooner but I got distracted and decided to repaint our kitchen island. Anyway, she's not completely done, I need to make her base and an ice cream cone for her to hold. I think she's going to be sitting too.

Monday, February 7, 2011

I NOW ♥ ♥LOVE♥ ♥ YARN HAIR



For the longest time now I've wanted to try yarn hair. I never did because I never really knew where to begin and didn't really try very hard to figure it out. Until I found a doll hair tutorial by bybido. The tutorial even mentions the book Kinder Dolls: A Waldorf Doll-Making Handbook, which I looked up. I did things a little differently but followed the main instructions.

Because this was my first attempt at yarn hair I bought the 5oz super junky Jiffy Thick & Quick yarn by Lion Brand. That way it would go a lot faster. I think I used about half the skein.

I didn't really know where I was going with my plush when I started so I just made a head and added ears. I wasn't really sure what the face was going to look like.  I decided to add  pins in place for the eyes, nose and mouth, so I knew where they were generally going to be. I also played around with laying the yarn on the head to get an idea of the front hair line.



I decided to go with a side part. I'm partial to the side part. Maybe because I see it every day when I look in the mirror.



Here are some more pics of me adding the hair. This is a view from the back at the crown of the head. I'd sew on 4 strands of yarn at a time. Just like the tutorial suggests.



Here's a front view of the head.



This is after all the hair had been added. I should have taken a photo before I had pulled the hair back in ponytails.



Back view.



Now was the fun part of styling the hair and adding the face. I knew when I began that I wanted the hair up. After pulling the hair into two ponytails I separated each of those into three sections and made three braids. Then I just pulled those up and sewed them into place.



Back view showing braids.

Now to decide what I want to do for the body.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

HAPPY SNOW DAY



So we were snowed in for two days here in KC. We actually had a blizzard and ended up with 12". Which to some in other parts of the country this isn't a big deal, but for KC and the midwest it was a lot.

Everybody was home and driving each other crazy. To keep busy I made one of my birds. I had forgotten how much I like my birds. I had thought one would be cute in my daughters new "bird" themed room but I didn't think I'd ever get around to making one. So I guess I should thank the snow.

The birds head is about 7 1/2" wide and the whole thing stands 24" tall,



I'm really bad about photographing work in progress but I did manage to get one pick taken at the beginning when I was cutting out my fabric. Many times I'll make a paper template for pieces, so if I should ever want to make more in the future I can. However there have been times were I just start cutting and sewing and don't make a template. The templates I make out of paper I keep in a large envelope with the name of the piece on the outside. Some have notes inside these envelopes as reminders of how I put things together. It's just how I stay organized.