Goldilocks & Red Riding Hood

It has been awhile since I have shared a sewing post. For Christmas this year I sewed some storybook friends for two of my nieces. I used the pattern for the Black Apple Doll from Martha Stewert’s site. You can download a template here.

The arms using the enlarged template seemed to be too skinny which made them difficult to turn. The dolls I made ended up being bigger than the template. I also wanted my dolls to have the appearance of longer hair, so I cut out two smaller pieces of hair from the felt. I didn’t have any fabric paint, so instead I cut the eye out of felt and hand sewed them on and hand stitched the mouths.

I gave these dolls to my nieces along with the appropriate book featuring the doll (Goldilocks and The Three Bears & Red Riding Hood).  These dolls are truly easy to make. The most difficult part for me was trying to sandwich the stuffed legs and arms in between the body front and body back and sewing it on my machine. If you have some sewing experience you probably can sew one doll from start to finish in a little over an hour.

Have fun sewing!

At the end of October my oldest niece O celebrated her 4th birthday. O loves to paint using watercolors, and she is really good at it. I thought I would make her a little art/craft apron to protect her clothes. I did not use a pattern for this apron, and completely improvised everything. For the pocket “flower pot” I ironed on a stabilizer to the back of the yellow fabric, to give it more structure. When making the flowers I did whatever came to me. I attached them to the green fabric by using stitch witchery. I also added a decorative stitch to the flowers. I hope O enjoys her new apron and gets lots of use out of it. It was fun to make and watch it come together.

Here is a link to free patterns and tutorials for making your own apron.

These are links from blogs I currently read that offer apron tutorials:

Retro Cocktail Apron at Craft Stylish

Craft Apron at Creative Little Daisy

A Walk in the Park Apron at Craft Leftovers