One Inch World

Rebecca is 4, which means that she gets to pick out the birthday presents for her friends, and while I may retain some veto power, and can provide suggestions, it’s really her show. But sometimes *I* want in on the fun too! So I made this barrette for one of her fashion conscious friends who was turning 3.

As usual I was planning an extravagant set of six barrettes, some leaves, flowers, an apple, an ‘A’, but reality set in, and I only ended up making one, which with all the hand stitching took me at least an hour, possibly two. I’m really not very fast with my hand sewing I guess. Too much of a perfectionist. When I was gathering the lace for the back I carefully took a stitch in the 2nd and 4th holes of the lace, pulled them together with the 0th and then tacked it down with a back stitch. Please, I’m gathering lace to the back of a barrette, not counting cross stitch, but I have a really hard time going fast. I find slow and precise relaxing, but frustrating at the same time.

To make this barrette cover I traced the barrette, cut two, clipped a hole for the back prong of the barrette, and with the barrette in the center sewed them together with a running stitch. Then I whip stitched the monogram/lace stack to the edges of the barrette.

I have been doing a ridiculous amount of cooking and fermenting and sprouting rather than blogging recently. I think I have 4-5 containers of various ginger ferments, 3 jars of somewhat suspicious pickles, I made crackers and quinoa milk today for heaven’s sake. I idly think about blogging as I’m cooking, and sometimes take pictures, but I don’t really think I should diversify this blog any further, it’s already gotten pretty unfocused from where I started! And sometimes that bothers me, but not enough to do anything about it yet. Would you like my blog better if it was my crafts only or children’s activities only?

Do you have a cheap glue gun that doesn’t stand up on its lame little stand? I do. Let’s fix them. I want my glue gun to stay where I put it, and not tip over, slide around, leak glue everywhere, and burn me or my daughters. Lame!

This is not a beautiful or complicated project, but I find it extremely helpful. Take a rough 12″x12″ piece of cardboard, and a large empty spool. (If you don’t have any empty spools you could probably use an empty spice jar or toilet paper tube in a pinch. I save thread spools for my daughters to use as threading beads, so I just raided one of those.) Use your glue gun to hot glue the the spool, on its side, into the middle of the cardboard. Cut a deep notch in the cardboard behind the spool for the cord, this is the important part, cheap glue guns always try to stand on their cords which is most of what tips them over. The notch channels the cord’s disruptive energy into extra stability. Take that, cord!

To stand your glue gun up slide the cord into the notch and stand your glue gun on the spool. Woo Hoo!

We are visiting my inlaws in Vermont for several weeks, and in addition to an immense forest to play in they have several enormously happy and productive lavender plants which are all spewing flowers. This doll is one of the things I came up with to do with them. She is loosely inspired by Grandma Nenny’s sweet grass dolls.

Things you will need:
Fresh lavender – fresh enough to bend in half without snapping.
A wooden bead, or something round with a hole through it for the head.
String for hair and shirt
Scissors, craft glue and something to draw a face with.

First draw your face, or draw your face last, or perhaps sometime in the middle, possibly never. There are many long traditions of faceless dolls, although sometimes I think they are a bit creepy. Besides, whenever I don’t put a face on a doll Rebecca always asks and asks and asks until I put a face on them. So draw the face.

Cut some hair by looping the yarn around your hand about seven times, depending on the size of the head and the hole in it, and cut the loops. Or, you know, don’t. If you have any roving that makes lovely hair. Moss does too. And daisy hats are always in style.

Take a lavender stem, fold it in half around the middle of the hair and thread the stem down through the head.

Pull the hair down halfway through the head. If it feels quite stuck then perfect, you’ve used the right amount of hair, nevermind how it covers the fairy’s head. If it feels loose, but you don’t want to add more, you can pull it out again, put a drop of glue down the hole and pull it in again. If it doesn’t fit, you’ll just have to figure something out, probably involving either glue or knots.

Hold the hair up and put glue around the hole in a C, leaving a gap for the face.

Pull the hair down into the glue strand by strand to create an even layer all around. If you think fairies should have bangs, don’t leave a gap in the glue for the face. Or also if you think fairies should look like Cousin It. No reason to keep it all one color either, pink in front, blue in the back, or maybe striped orange and black like a tiger lilly.

On to the body, the dancing skirt, the home of the heart. Gather your lavender into a bundle, the tips of the blossoms all at the same height. You will want somewhere between 6-12 stems of lavender depending on their size and the size of the doll. This is art, not science!

Tie a knot to hold the bunch together, leaving a two inch tail on one side, and several feet or the whole ball uncut on the other. If you are thinking about proportions, the knot will be just below the finished dolls arms. The dolls I like the best have had the knot just above the top of the highest bud. The one in the picture is a bit high I think.

Bend 2-3 stalks straight out to either side just above the knot. Decide on an arm length, then bend the stalks back double and trim them 1/4″ to 1/2″ past the central stalk, so they go behind the sticking up stems and overlap the other arm a bit.

Trim the unbent stalks off at half a head height above the shoulders. So if your head is 1″ in diameter, trim the stalks off about 1/2″. The stalks should give you a little bit of neck, then go into the head and rest against the hair stuffed down the bead shaft.

Attach the head next. It’s a bit fiddly. If you like glue put a bit in the bottom of the head. Then thread the lavender stalk coming out of the head down through the knot holding the body bundle of lavender together. Keep pushing the head down and feed all of the neck lavender stalks into the neck hole of the head. Pull the body knot tight if it’s come loose. There’s nothing holding the arms bent at this point except my finger, don’t worry if they are waving wildly around, just gather them up again once the head is on.

From now to the end tuck the short tail of the yarn down with the skirt, we will want it to finish the knot at the end, so don’t loose it, just keep it out of the way. Tie two half hitches, (does that make it a full hitch?) around each shoulder to hold the arms together. Just tie two on one side, pull the yarn around behind the shoulders and tie the other two for the other arm.

At this point the doll is structurally done, and how you wrap or knot the shirt is a matter of taste. First, before you start wrapping though, give her a kiss for her heart!

For the shirt I like to wrap the yarn from the shoulder down the arm for a sleeve, then wrap back to the shoulder, cross over the body, wrap down the other arm and back up to the shoulder for the other sleeve. But leave her sleeveless if you want. Then for the body I alternate wrapping around the waist/chest once, up over one shoulder, down and around the waist, up over the other shoulder and back to the waist and around. Do that a handful of times and it will create a woven ‘V’ front. When you are done wrapping the body tie a square knot, with the original tail you’ve been saving, over her hip, in the middle, or wherever you like it. Trim the ends.

Then make another one so they can be friends. Once I finished this one I had to make a baby for her. Hugs! And now I’m feeling a strange urge to sew a felt kimono for her…

Why do tutorials always take 10 times longer than you originally think? This really is a pretty simple doll, and exactly how you do the steps doesn’t much matter, so don’t worry, go out and pick some lavender. Or grass, or some weeds. Hmm. Next I will make her a friend ‘clover’! Let me know what happens with you!

Do you live in the SF Bay Area? Do you live near Mountain View? Well, if you do…

Have you heard of FabMo? It’s this wonderful small organization devoted to re-distributing all of the fabric cast off from discontinued designer fabric samples. Apparently after trade shows and product cycles and what not there are dumpsters full of fabric samples, and this local organization gets them, before they go into the dumpster, organizes them and has free distribution days once a month where you can make an appointment and go take whatever you want. Really. They have a donation tube to help pay for their small warehouse space, but it’s free and fun and great for teachers and crafters. Their website explains it better than I did.

But we went, and it’s the real deal. Rebecca picked out a treasure of small mosaic tiles and hand sized leather samples. I picked out a stack of roughly 1′x1′ fabric samples and a stack of doormat sized wool rug samples. Penelope has been falling over a lot lately…

I realized near the end that since they are mostly upholstery samples, even though I was sticking to the ones labeled as linen & cotton, they were probably covered in teflon and brominated flame retardants. And, being me, I sort of freaked out and haven’t really figured out what to do about it. I washed them all, and then started worrying that my washing machine was contaminated and the next load of baby sleepers I put in was going to be poisoned for ever. Yes, at the same time I am quite aware that I am being silly and have a problem. My home is statistically likely to already be full of bromine so, chill mama, right? We do what we can and try not to worry too much. How did we get on the topic of my plastic phobia again? Darn, I need to stop doing that.

Ahem. FabMo! They’re doing something cool, check them out if you live in the SF Bay Area.

Marigold is a doll I made roughly based on the Black Apple pattern. I drew the pieces myself, changed the directions around, embroidered her face, and boxed the bottom so she would sit up. I should have stuffed her butt with beans or made it thicker… The jersey I used for her face/arms/legs is too thin unfortunately, and I think her inner leg joint is already tearing a little, because Neleepop likes to yank her around by her skinny legs, which are fabulous for grabbing.

Also, she is quite fond of poking, or smashing her eyes. But they are quite sturdy. And then there is the head biting. But then, then there is the hugging and squealing!!! So thrilling! Obviously 10 months is the perfect age for first doll love.

I’m not supposed to be blogging right now, I’m supposed to be meeting my deadline. But it’s been a week! My house is getting messier and messier and older daughter spent an unheard of amount of time in front of the computer today. So here, here is something I whipped up before I was sucked into this One Yard Wonders 2 thing.

Birthday. Mother suggested that she would appreciate play acting props, careers other than ‘princess’. I chose mail man. This hat, other than being too small, worked wonderfully from my imagination to implementation!

The bag, well, it is recycled from a shirt in the rag bag. I got a new serger! Named Sammy. This was practice using it, quite a different thing than I’m used to, it was quite fun! I made the strap about twice too long and tried to just lap it and sew to make it shorter, but that was a disaster, ended having to undo the bag seam, remake a bunch of it, but it was still a quick satisfying project. So what if I did write the letter shapes with permanent marker rather than erasable marker… It is still quite good for play acting, not going to be winning any design comps with it though!