One Inch World

I have to admit, I feel like an odd sort of failure – I tried to give something away for free on the internet and I only got one taker. I guess I was giving away too much baggage with it? I kept thinking my blog must be broken and all the comments were getting eaten by my spam filter. But hey, happy ending, I happen to really like the one person who did comment:

maryanne Says:
October 16th, 2009 at 9:58 am edit
I would love to give this doll to my grandmother. She collects dolls, loves pink, and could use some cheering up. And, this doll reminds me of photos of her from when she was young.

So there you go. Her underclothes could use a little new elastic, but if you don’t mind her knickers falling down I think she’s an adorable doll and I hope she cheers your grandmother up!

What to do with tiny fabric scraps from your stash? Cut interesting shapes out of them and add them to a felt board set. It will be more fun to build with because there will be more textures and patterns to play with, not just felt. You can use any kind of fabric for this, cotton, corduroy, velvet, linen… You can even use paper, and although nothing will stick on top of the paper shapes they can add a lot of interest too. The secret to using all these different materials on your felt board is to bond them to a layer of felt.

First you need a felt board though, perhaps you already have one, or they aren’t difficult to make. Just take a large piece of felt or flannel and back it with thick fusible interfacing for a roll-able board, or wrap it around a board and tack or staple or glue it for something sturdier. Here is a great and super simple travel felt board tutorial by MaryAnne at mama smiles, and a really cute felt board in frame posted by itty bitty love.

I think the fun part, and what I want to talk about here is making all the shapes. The traditional way is to cut them out of felt, which is great because it’s cheap and it doesn’t fray. But with a little craft glue or fusible interfacing you don’t have to be limited to just felt. The steps are super simple, demonstrated here in part by my three year old assistant.

Smear glue on the back of the fabric or paper. Use a craft glue that says it is flexible when dry, or I’ve also used glue sticks before to glue felt. If you are using liquid glue try to spread it quickly and thinly so it doesn’t completely saturate the fabric and felt.

Stick the paper or fabric down on top of a piece of felt.

Fold inside an ironing cloth to protect your iron from the glue and iron it flat and dry. Then cut it into an interesting shape.

If you have some fusible interfacing scraps around that have a fuzzy felty back you can skip the glue step. The thin kind of fusible interfacing I have is slippery on the back and won’t really stick to the felt board, but the thick kind I have is fuzzy on the back and works great. Just test what you have, and see if it sticks. Or you can use double sided fusible stuff, with fabric on top and felt on the bottom, replacing the glue above.

Just cover your fusible interfacing with tiny scraps, or big scraps, cover the whole thing with an expendable ironing cloth, and iron it. You will have to peel the ironing cloth off, but as long as there aren’t too large gaps between your tiny scraps it isn’t a big deal, the fusible glue isn’t that strong, especially if you peel it while it’s warm. Or you can cut up your fusible interfacing before hand to fit under your fabric scraps. If you have a lot of really tiny scraps though I don’t think it’s worth the fuss.

Then you’ll have a fast pile of interesting shapes to cut up.

Slice them and dice them into triangles, squares, circles, squiggles, splots, lines, wiggles… Oh and of course these fabric scraps make great felt person clothes. Here is a simple person pattern for making a felt doll, there are extra lines on it suggesting where to cut for shirts and short and pants, follow the outline from the waist to the hips and then flair out for a skirt, or just cut a trapezoid, felt boards are the land of imagination after all.

There are so many directions you can go with felt boards, geometric shapes, animals, people, story-boards… mama smiles has a lot more patterns for sets of felt shapes if you search her site for ‘felt board’, and there are also some cute felt shape ideas at Dundee Writer: Flannel Making Frenzy, and Chasing Cheerios: A Felt Jack O’Lantern Game.

Rebecca had as much fun cutting up the new shapes as playing with them later, so if you have a little one be sure to involve them in both kinds of play!

I went to Goodwill, um, okay, I’m not even going to admit how long ago and thus how long this has been sitting on my to-do list… But anyway, someone had donated a very large doll collection, most of them 12-18″ soft bodied dolls with ceramic head, hands and feet. I got the feeling the donor had recently passed away, but perhaps they were moving into a nursing home, or just moving on, but then I think it would be so sad that they didn’t have someone to pass them on to. Maybe these were the leftovers, but they were everywhere – lined up in the toy section, scattered through the furniture section, propped up at the end of the glassware aisle… It was impressive. I told Rebecca that she could pick her favorite, and then I found two with music boxes in their abdomens, and then another I couldn’t leave behind, and that was my limit, but then I found a fifth, plastic this time, but with such style that I knew there was someone somewhere who would appreciate her far more than her Goodwill price tag was going to get her. So, yah, I left with four dolls for Rebecca and I, and one to give away, but how could I not? I’m not the sort of person to pay a new price tag for one of these, but they were sitting there for $5-$8 begging to be rescued. My rational was that two would be for Rebecca, and two for miss unborn – there, maybe you didn’t notice, but obviously I’ve been holding on to this for at least two months, since Penelope is that old now, but the truth is probably twice that. Ahem.

So, here is this incredibly stylish girl in pink, her dress tag says “Vogue Dolls, Inc. Made in U.S.A”, I have no idea if that just applies to the dress (and matching hat) or the doll too. Her eyes open and close, and she is jointed at the neck shoulders and hips and has no problems sitting up by herself. She has a corsage reading “Gary and Connie February 28, 1976″. A wedding presumably, I would love to know the story behind all these dolls. I would love to keep her, but I’m getting rid of things in a quest for tranquility and some freaking space around here, so I certainly can’t keep something I bought intending to give away.

I’m hoping to find someone who will love this doll, not flip it on Ebay, so if you want her please tell me why, and what you plan to do with her. It will be a random draw among all the people who sound convincing, and if you blog this or follow this blog feel free to enter two or three times and tell me. Having a blog or some kind of internet presence would go a long way to convincing me you are a real person, so do put your blog or flickr page, or whatever, into the comment url field. I’ve been a bit burned on an internet gift before, and I’m a bit hesitant about the whole thing now, but this girl deserves a loving home. The giveaway will be open for a week, I’ll close comments next Tuesday night (the 20th) or Wednesday morning, and it may take me a couple days to sift the comments. P.S. I’ll ship anywhere.

Felt lollipops for Halloween, or anytime you need play-sweets. Start your own lollipop sweet shop with dolls (you can even twist the pipe cleaners around their hands so they can hold them if you make them long enough), or engage in some trick-or-treat play drama, or maybe you just need something cute for the middle of your table. These are so simple you don’t need a tutorial, but the dimensions and pictures are useful, right?

Materials:
Half a pipe cleaner,
two 1.5″ circles of felt,
embroidery floss,
2″ wide packing tape or clear contact paper.

(I used wool felt, but craft felt should work fine.)

Twist one end of the pipe cleaner up in a spiral that is a little smaller than one of the felt circles. Fold about half an inch of the bottom end up so that the wires at the bottom won’t poke anyone.

Stitch around the edge of the circle with contrasting (or matching) embroidery floss, trapping the pipe cleaner inside. I used all six strands because I wanted the stitching to really stand out. To make it easier to sew with six strands you can divide it into three strands, thread it onto your needle, pull all six of the ends together and knot them. Then you aren’t trying to pull twelve strands of floss through the felt with each stitch.

Cut three pieces of packing tape or contact paper:
* One 1.5″x3.25″ piece for the inside of the wrapper, cutting this without getting it to stick to itself is a little tricky!
* Two about 2″x3″ pieces for the outside. Don’t worry about the exact size – just big enough to cover the inside wrapper and hang over the edge by at least 1/2″, but more is fine.

Take the narrow piece of tape and fold it over the top of the lollipop, sticky side out – you don’t want the tape to stick to the felt. The folded tape should be just a tiny bit bigger than the lollipop.

Place the larger pieces horizontally and sticky side in on the front and back, lining up the bottom edges as best you can and letting the other sides hang over. Press it all together and smooth it out with your fingers.

You should now have a wrapper that slides on and off. Take it off and trim up the edges. You can cut them all flat or cut some of the edges with pinking sheers – for a traditional lollipops from a roll look trim the top and bottom edges flat and the left and right edges crinkly. I decided to pink mine around the top three edges, because crinkly is cute!

These are really fast, so make a bunch! Time for play!

Finally finally finally I have a pattern in my Etsy store. Now of course I need to start another one! But the ice is broken and I’m getting my toes wet, or frozen, or something!

Now I have to go do one of those sidebar widgety things…

Our art playgroups have been a little spotty recently, with new babies (two) and preschool starting for everyone. Yesterday though we did liquid watercolors in spray bottles, which I thought was beautiful and interesting with all the colors bleeding and dripping, but no one lasted through more than one painting. I should have put up pages for the moms too, I keep asking Rebecca if she wants to go out on the patio with me and do it again…

Last week we made mud pies. I was really surprised by who got the most involved, the same girl who usually refuses to put her fingers in the paint or shaving cream! I guess it’s all about the substance. Of course at least half of what went on with the mud pies turned out to be dumping dirt into the baby pool and jumping in it. Once that got too cold there was smearing mud all over the patio and pouring water over it and squishing it between your toes. Mmmm, mud.