Making the rounds and more dolls

The funk seems to be making the rounds yet again. Liam came down with a fever this morning and has been complaining of the usual cold symptoms. He spent most of the day laying around looking pretty sad and pathetic. Poor little guy. The rest of us are going to get on the ball this time and try to avoid catching the latest plague. Lysol here I come!

After spending the day in Pennsylvania yesterday doing some outlet shopping for hubby, we came home to an empty house again. The kiddos stayed one more night with the grandparents, since we weren't due to get home until way after their bedtime, and they came home for breakfast this morning. That meant plenty of time for me to work on crafty things yesterday and today.

I'm plugging along in Kinder Dolls, making each one and trying to decide what I like making the best. The author recommends starting with the smallest/simplest dolls and working your way up to the more difficult dolls. Makes sense, I'd say.

So here's the first little doll:

It has flannel for the body and a wool head covered in knit fabric. The hair is mohair that I sewed on in a swirl pattern. Not too bad, but awful fiddly to make because of the small size.

And here's the second one I made today:

This one is made using fabric from an old hooded baby towel. I always thought they were too thin to actually use to dry the baby off and keep him/her warm, but I think that it makes great fabric for dolls! The inner head is a wrapped wool ball covered with gauze stockinette, and I sewed the hat onto the head after stuffing the head inside the doll body. I tied little knots in the ends of the arms and on the hat. This will make a great teething doll for a baby. Not sure whether I want to hang onto this one or not. I can tell you that I will be making more! I think thrifted baby towels will work great for this once I run out....and I can see making smaller ones, too, and maybe from other stretchy fabrics. The nice thing is you could throw these in the gentle cycle and wash them, since the wool head is fairly well felted.

I found a trick to making the heads for these dolls. The heads need to be pretty firm, and I've always had a hard time pulling the wool batting tight enough as I wrap it to get it hard enough without it breaking it. Yesterday, I picked up a Clover needle felting tool and mat at the knitting store (along with a couple other things :P). I used that as I added layers of wool to help ensure that it stayed firm enough. I think it works pretty well. I'm thinking if I can get decent light sometime soon (we are going toward winter, after all, so it's mostly gray and dark now), I'll put together a photo tutorial.

Oh, boy...on to the next!