Dolls, mostly

So I've been a little AWOL this month... Thank you volleyball and Christmas presents. lol. This year, Christmas presents were crazy. I decided to do a 99 percent homemade Christmas (I bought Jeff a book and a few stocking stuffers...), which made for a really busy couple weeks. And since volleyball went pretty far in the postseason, I didn't have time to finish my Christmas presents early...

My chef d'oeuvre was creating dolls for my nieces. I based my doll pattern on By Hook, By Hand's Prairie Flower Doll. Our printer wasn't working at the time, so I just free handed the pattern. I didn't use the neck darts, even though I like the shape, because the muslin I used wasn't very strong and it made the neck seams rip. I also think the limbs of my dolls are longer, making them a little more proportional.

I started off with Genevieve (Zhehn-uh-vee-ehv... It's French.) She was my test doll.

This is Genevieve, with her dreadlocks and Angelina Jolie lips. lol. For the other dolls, I made their mouths a lot smaller and used a much smaller yarn for their hair.

Jeff made fun of me, because while I was working on them I called the dolls by their names, as opposed to saying "I need to do the hair for Niece No. 1's doll" or "I need to make the dress for Niece No. 2's doll." It was all "Where is Elouise?" or "What am I going to do for Elizabeth's dress?"

Now, I wasn't being a picky aunt and naming all the dolls before giving them to my nieces to make sure they got good names. I know the importance of being able to pick out names for your dolls. (Believe me...) But these dolls are special. I went through the Hawks family tree and picked out the names of ancestors for the dolls. Then I made their clothes to match the time period those women lived in. I also embroidered the dolls names on their tummies.

I started with my oldest niece's doll, but then switched the youngest nieces' dolls because I found out my older two nieces would be coming up here for Christmas, so we wouldn't have to ship them. We shipped the youngest two nieces' dolls just in time. They got there the day before Christmas. lol. I finished them and Jeff wrapped them at 5, so we made it to the post office just in time on the last day we could ship it to make it there by Christmas.

The first doll I completed was Elouise, who was born in the late 1800s. (She was for my youngest niece.) Then there was Phoebe, who lived in the early 1800s (second youngest niece), Lucy, who lived in the 1700s (second oldest niece) and Elizabeth, who lived in the 1600s (oldest niece). I was in no way sure what the real women's hair colors were, so I made two of them brunettes and two of them blondes. Then I made two with blue eyes, one with brown and one with green.

This is Elouise (pink dress) and Phoebe (blue dress). Elouise's dress was the first doll dress I ever made. There were definitely some frustrating parts, but it turned out the way I imagined. :) These dolls have less hair than the other two. I can't decide which I like more... These were the last two dolls I embroidered. After embroidering the faces for Elizabeth and Lucy, I decided to make a template for the faces so they came out more the same. Elizabeth and Lucy are a little more unique because I free handed their faces. But even with the template, Phoebe and Elouise came out looking unique. For one thing, their faces are a little different shaped. Don't really know how that happened. lol. Phoebe had a really square head before I put her hair on.

I'm not really sure what I did differently when embroidering the mouths, but my first round of embroidered faces (Elizabeth and Lucy) have smiles and the second round dolls don't really have smiles. 

I was going to make shoes for them.... But the shoes were a failure and they would have significantly increased the time for each doll. Maybe I'll try to make shoes later, but I think they look okay without shoes.

I made the hair according to Crafty Sheep's tutorial for Waldorf doll hair. My dolls aren't Waldorf dolls, but it works for any kind of doll.

Elouise's dress was made out of some material I bought a while ago. It's really, really hard fabric to sew with.... Especially when make teeny tiny clothes. But the final result was worth it.

I couldn't find a good example of an early 1800s American dress, so even though the real Phoebe was American, I made her a Jane Austen-style dress. It includes my first attempt at a pleat. :) It wasn't perfect, but I thought it looked good. I loved the flower pattern on the fabric and thought it worked well with the style.

Then I decided that every Regency-era dress needed a matching bonnet, so I whipped up a quick one for Phoebe. Bonnets weren't a must for girls in the late 1800s, at least not according to the pictures I looked at. That's why she didn't get one...

 Here is Lucy (yellow dress) and Elizabeth (blue and black outfit). I also love the fabric on Lucy's dress. I actually made myself a dress from that fabric. There were a lot of scraps, and I thought it would make an adorable doll dress. I was a little worried with how hers would turn out because I cut the bodice to make a little white stomacher, but I thought it turned out well.

And she has a little white cap, of course. Definitely part of the colonial outfit.

 Elizabeth's dress was probably the most difficult to come up with. I didn't want her to look like a pilgrim (how sad would that be if your sister had a doll with a cute dress and your doll had a boring dress?), but it was really hard to find any other examples of clothing from that time period. I also didn't want to even attempt one of the ridiculous fruffy collars from the other pictures I found from the 1600s. I finally found a picture of a jacket from the late 1600s that had a bit of a gathered skirt. I thought it was cute. I originally made the jacket way too wide, and the neckline was incredibly gappy. I added two little tucks to the neckline, which I thought added a cute touch, even if they weren't really authentic. And I added white buttons, to tie in the white from the cap. The black skirt was very plain, so I added an apron with white trim.

Sorry the last two dolls' photos have such bad lighting. I may or may not have finished them in the middle of the night... Jeff says I'm not allowed to do the majority of my Christmas presents the week of Christmas anymore. ;)

Here's a closer look at the dolls' faces. I did some highlights in a lighter color and then did a little reflection with some white thread.

Here's a closeup of Elizabeth's smile. Much more of a smile, I'd say.

Making these dolls was quite a bit of a challenge, especially since I didn't get time to work on them until it was crunch time. Hopefully I won't have to finish four dolls in a week ever again, but I learned so much from making these and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. The best part is, it's made me want to make more dolls instead of making me not want to ever make a doll again. But I'll give Jeffrey a break and won't make another one for a while... ;)

Here are a few of the other gifts I made...

 I love fabric paint. I discovered it after perusing the blog I Am Momma, Hear Me Roar. My brothers didn't even realize I'd made the designs on their shirts at first. :) The one not pictured is my youngest brother's Wisconsin shirt. He loves "The W's", so I made him a shirt that says "Go W's" on the back with a Wisconsin Badger on the front.

For these, I printed a design onto the papery side of freezer paper then cut out the parts I wanted to be painted. Then I ironed them onto the shirts or dish towels. The waxy side adheres to the fabric, so you can paint over it like using a stencil. After several hours, you peel the freezer paper off and voila! It's so simple, I checked several blogs before I tried it. I was a little skeptical that it could be that simple. For the first T-shirt, I used painters tape to make the diamond shapes around the drum set.

I also embroidered some napkins for my mother-in-law with little flowers. For one of my sisters-in-law, I had her daughters draw pictures of them with their mom, then I traced it onto dish towels and embroidered them. We also traced the hands of her two sons and I embroidered those. The older daughter did a picture with a lot of different colors, which took twice as long as all the others. lol. We finished them, washed them and put them in the dryer right as my brother-in-law and sister-in-law came to pick up the presents on Christmas Eve. Finished just in time. :) Jeff helped me a lot on that one, because technically it was supposed to be his gift to my sister-in-law. He got the girls' drawings and traced them onto the dish towels. He also washed and dried and packaged them. All I did was the embroidery. :)

I don't think my other sister-in-law has opened her gift from me yet, so I won't tell you about that one. lol.