One Inch World

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!

I was throwing out all my old makeup – I never wear makeup anymore, and besides, old makeup is gross – and I thought, being sadly unable to throw *anything* away, that the twisty mechanism was a good thing to put into some kind of Montessori-esq tactile activity. So I cleaned them out, and then they twisted, but there wasn’t anything left to show that they went up and down, clearly they needed something inside them, and hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it was a crayon?? At first I was thinking of hot glueing in some regular crayons, but then I realized that fat crayons were more lipstick sized. They were too big to fit though, so I started whitling them down with a butter knife, until I could cram them into the little veined cups, and they stayed in just fine!

And they twist up and down, and they draw, and they are so cute! So, now we have four lipstick crayons, and I’ve only found *one* in the washing machine so far…

Once we were done making them we used the wax shavings – yes yes, couldn’t just throw them away – to make sun catchers. I’m sure that’s why it’s been raining for the last two weeks…

So, I’m sure, being moms, that you have some lipstick languishing in a drawer somewhere that would be so much happier as a crayon!

Basic Instructions:
Clean out lipstick with a paper towel, and maybe a q-tip. They don’t need to be washed, just mostly clean.
Take half a fat crayon, and whittle it down until you can jam it into the lipstick holder. You shouldn’t have to hammer it in, but it should be tight.
Done!

I think these would make great little valentines day presents too!

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!

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!

I was going to go all fancy pants with this, but then I just went and did it. Textures. No stitched edges or reinforced pages, no textures front to back, no glue, no labels or embroidery to distract, just some rectangles of stuff to touch that is sewn together. I even included some pages that probably won’t last, but that’s an interesting discovery of its own, destruction!

Step 1: Gather stuff. Different papers, different fabrics, whatever you have lying around. Something crinkly, something fuzzy. You can see from this picture that I did have something with embroidery, it happened to be the only linen in my scrap bag, but I might have gone with it anyway because dragonflies are cool, and who cares about rules anyway. Also the wildly mushroomy paper, but that went on the back – I decided I did want the non-patterned side facing forward in the book.

Step 2: Decide on a book size – I chose 5″x5.5″ because of the width of some watercolor paper I had in my stack of stuff.

Step 3: Cut everything the same size. I used my fabric cutting mat and rotary cutter for the fabric, for the paper I used my cutting mat and a box cutter. For some reason it never occurred to me until about a month ago that I could use my cutting mat with razor blades and such. I’m sure it will shorten it’s life, but hey, so useful. I used pinking sheers on the most ravely looking stuff.

From the top left: watercolor paper, blue craft felt, the metallic liner of Annies whole wheat bunny crackers (shiny, crinkly, and sturdier than tinfoil), white denim, hand dyed flannel, some weird woven silver fabric (I have no idea where this came from, but it also happened to be exactly 5.5″ wide, so clearly it was destined), pink fleece, linen with dragonfly, fake suede-y stuff with little metal dots and glitter randomly scattered (who designs this stuff? My husband bought it for me to make a dice bag for him, and it was awful to sew), dark red velvet, doubled up wax paper (not going to last long), and scrap booking paper embossed with a woven pattern. My original musings called for some other things, but the day I made this that was what ended up in the random collection pile. I’m sure you can come up with your own wonderful collection of textures, maybe throw in some wood veneer and a layer of cork!

Step 4: Put them into a nice order, possibly with the papers alternating with the fabrics so they slide flat and don’t stick to each other, but whatever.

Step 5: This is the really exciting one, jam the whole thing under the foot of your sewing machine and stitch down one edge. Use a long stitch, and don’t sew too close to the edge or the whole thing will squeeze out the edge like when you’re trying to eat a melty ice cream sandwich, only less sticky. My first seam is about 1/2″ in. Then sew another line of stitching closer to the edge, and aim to get it straighter than mine.

Alternately, if you have real book binding skill you could stab bind it, or whatever you would do if you knew more about book binding than I do.

Step 6: Find a baby to play with!

There are all kinds of ways you could cute this up, adding ribbons, binding the edges of the fabrics with a zigzag stitch or sewing the more ravely fabrics face together along three sides and then turning them out… But this way I got it finished in the spare moments of a baby filled afternoon.

P.S. I really wanted to get the pattern for my Witch, Imp, Ghost and Bat Treat Hiding Balls into my sad empty Etsy shop before October (tomorrow!) but it’s just not going to happen. Wish me luck and bravery to get it all together by the end of the weekend. I’m making good progress. Here’s a picture of my finished Ghost, does he look a little psycho?