The Meryl Sisters

It's still January so that totally seems to fall in the acceptable range of discussing all that Christmas crafting I did (nevermind the fact that I had uploaded all the images ahead of time with the intention of writing blog posts as I was visiting family over the holidays).

First and foremost, I fixed that doll I thought looked a little off. The mom who purchased them for her daughters liked one more than the other and I couldn't blame her. I took a few tools on the road with me and showed up at her door to fix the doll.

Remember that she started out looking like this:

(she's the one on the right)

And to be honest she reminded me forceably of Kristin Wiig's SNL character, one of the Meryl Sisters.



Not exactly cute for a little girls first, best doll.

So I added a little hair to her front, restyled it into a pony tail, added some recycled silk yarn as a headband and a bow.



Much better.

the two unnamed girls

A friend contacted me and asked me to make dolls for her twin girls. She had asked that they have little houses/nests/sleeping bags of sorts to rest in; a banana for one and a pea pod for the other.



They turned out rather cute. Their little cocoons are pretty basic, but when the dolls are nestled in them they look pretty cozy.



The dolls themselves are made from a recycled wool sweater with pretty fabric to make the dress/body. The hair on both of them is wool, but they're stuffed with fiberfill. I sort of feel like the hairline on the black haired girl is off and she looks a little funny, but when I tried giving her bangs it was a bit of a disaster so she stayed like that. In retrospect, maybe she needed a side part and a ponytail instead of pig tails.



What's funny though is that I name almost all my toys. They usually have a little tag with their name and a short back story like "I love to jumprope and I think bugs are gross." or the like, but this time I just plain forgot to name them. Hopefully these two girlies don't stay unnamed for very long.

Khalil

This saucy fellow was a custom for someone local. She asked for traditional dress, which I was happy to try out. I think it came out okay, but really doll clothes are the bane of my existence. I love making dolls, but giving them something to wear is another story. I think part of my problem is that I don't have good patterns drafted for all the styles of clothing I want to make. The other problem is just that it's all so small. I hate to admit, but I'm just not that precise of a sewer and those little 1/8 seams and hems do me in. Anyone have a good doll clothes tutorial or tips page?

At any rate, his outfit came out okay, with only one minor error so overall I'll call him a success.