Doll stories continued

Hello again! In the comments of my last post from October Dolores suggested a Winter version with boots and mittens etc. I really liked the idea and felt like a fashion designer trying to create a warm Winter coat made to measure for the long legged doll. (Yes, I'm watching the Great British Sewing Bee.) I had this yellow wool fabric just waiting to be used, and I cut and sewed and enjoyed myself immensely. Her dress is made of an old Christmas curtain and the bloomers are of red flannel.

Detail of the back.  The dress is very wide so the coat had to be cut with that in mind. I just happened to have some green leather rests to use for her boots. They are big because she wears red wool socks too.

For her scarf and hat I used the rest of my cardigan yarn. Yes, I have knitted a whole cardigan for myself this Autumn, and I'm knitting another for my daughter in black. I love her so much that I can knit for her using black yarn.

I have also made a Christmas angel version, here with three of my original dolls and the new girl with coat and boots. The angel's dress is off-white baby corduroy with a linen border and gold star  ribbon, and she has factory made wood wings.

Red wool socks keep her toes warm, and she has a Christmas song book.

With these dolls I wish my readers a peaceful Christmas time, and hope to see you again next year.

 

Dolls with long legs

Hello again! I have been off line a lot but thought I could drop a line or two again and show you what I have been doing. I got this pattern from a dear friend many many years ago and wanted finally to use it to make an Autumn doll with oak leaves, flannel bloomers and button arms.

Making the doll was fun (except for the turning of the long thin legs), so I used the same pattern to make a Summer doll. Short sleeves, embroidered flowers for the dress, fine broderie anglaise bloomers.

Before Summer comes Spring, and in the Spring come the migrating birds. I embroidered little birds in my Spring doll's dress.

The Winter doll is preparing for Christmas and knitting a scarf for her friend. Appliqued holly garland with embroidered red berries in her flannel dress. Her bloomers are made with warm flannel, and she has wool socks instead of shoes.

Then it happened that my sister saw the dolls and wished for one for Christmas. I made it for her birthday already, and one for my other big sister.

All six dolls are here together.

This one is the birthday doll.

And here knitter doll with her button dress.

Production line

 This week I have been working on a production line. I found an abandoned jacket Mr K. has used for dusty work on his bamboo rods. It had holes, stains and missing buttons and it was doomed to the textile recycling bag, but I saw that the back part and the top of both sleeves was clean and in good condition, so I took my simple pattern for trousers and cut four pairs of shorts and one pair of long trousers, and then binned the rest what was left. I also found two pairs of kind of khaki shorts I had made some years ago for "my one day box" waiting for these dolls. Summer pants situation good, Winter ones still to do!

Then I went "shopping" in my wool fabric box and some other boxes, and found a pair of orphan sleeves in red and white. They will make some lovely garments for my girl dolls.

The green blouse fabric rests from my mother's sewing room will make a beautiful lining for a coat.

The youngest boy's dungarees need the shoulder straps fastened, button holes and buttons, and the final inseam sewn. I chose the worn part at the elbow from the jacket for the backside of these, because I remember from the books that Roger's bottom needed patching. Boys around age 7 tend to wear out their clothes even faster than they can outgrow them! He has now hair and a wool jumper and socks already, so it will not take too long before you can meet him.

Dolls for Unicef, again

Meet my newest Unicef dolls, numbers 66 to 69 on my list. My hopeful plan is to make them a hundred dolls in my lifetime. I finished this lot today, and they are waiting for the new identity card forms from the Unicef office.

The dolls will not be sold but adopted, and the adoption fee, 20 to 40€ or more, will go 100% to Unicef. It is enough to buy all vital vaccinations for a real child somewhere out there where life is so much tougher.

The dolls don't even have names yet. I will go through my list first, because I don't want to use the same names again. I think the boy will be called Valtteri.

I was experimenting with new hairstyles and noticed that the more yarn I use, the better the hair will look, to a certain limit of course. The girl in the blue and white dress is having a bad hair day because I ran out of that yarn. Let's not call it bad hair, it is more like typical Finnish mouse coloured thin  and limp hair.

Maybe the two redheads ought to swap dresses? The purple might look great with green eyes.

Here are all my socks with the price tags Kaija designed and printed for me. I just stamped the size, price and name of the socks on them and punched the holes before sewing them on the socks.

October has almost over and I haven't sewn any Splendid Sampler blocks since my last post here. Maybe now when the socks and the dolls are off my list I can concentrate on the quilt blocks again.

First Finish of the Year 2015

Happy New Year everyone!

Naturally this doll has its beginning in the old year, babies take their time. He is my 65th Unicef doll, once again for my sister in Germany. She has by now taken care of the vaccinations of the babies of almost a whole village, as each doll is adopted for a fee that buys all the vaccinations for one real child.

As this doll is not for little ones to play with, I could make his shirt with tiny buttons, and the hair is a machine sewn fringe hand sewn on the head, not recommended for children under 3 years either, but looks a lot better than  individual strands of wool yarn sewn directly on the head, like a ryijy rug.

The knitting pattern is one our grandmother used for our mittens, with a new look from the self striping yarn. I used the same yarn for his socks.

We have started a new bird spotting list at the beginning of the year, and already one rare friend is on the list: the Eurasian treecreeper. We have put special special birdhouses for them in the forest but they have not been used yet. Almost every year we notice this little bird climbing up the oak we see through the kitchen window, or in the silver birches in the garden. They don't come to the bird feeder.

My last Christmas flowers. I hope you like the scent of hyacinths!

Dolls who needed a doctor

Last week I took some tiny patients to see a doctor. The dolls came to me from my mother last year, and they were so poorly! The little one had one arm loose and a severe hip condition. She was also dusty and her outfit - just underwear - was more grey than white.

 

 

 

The bigger one had her wig (my other grandmother's own hair) off and her blush was spotty and her face needed some soap and water too. Only now I noticed that she should have had an eye operation as well.

 

Luckily there is a doll doctor in Helsinki, and I had an appointment with them and left the dolls in capable hands.

 

Here are some views of Dr. Benita's surgery and shop. Some of the dolls are antique, some just old, but they are all lovely. Maija, your doll's twin sister is on the bike!

 

 

Here are two special dolls: On the right a Bebe doll from the time after the WWII when there was shortage of everything. Many kinds of substitute materials were used for the dolls' heads, and as mohair was not available the hair was just painted on. The baby doll sitting next to her is a rare specimen of plastic dolls made in Finland by Siro Oy. You could get it in exchange of newspapers for recycling, when you had collected enough vouchers.

 

This is the doctor's reproduction based on the old Finnish Martta doll called  Pipsa, made in Finland from about 1908 until 1974. The manufacture was organised by a women's association Martat, and the sewing, stuffing etc. was done by women at their home. Some specialised in sewing the dolls, others made clothes for them, and the demand was so great that the manufacture soon grew into a real industry.

 

The doll doctor with her staff also treat teddy bears and other soft toys.

 

While my dolls were taken care of, I washed their clothes. She has new rubber bands for her arms and legs now, and she has had a bath. Look how pretty!

 

Here is my other "new" doll. Her dress had so many holes that she has to wait in her petticoat until I have sewn her a new dress. Any suggestions?

Doctor Benita helped me also with this case. I don't remember ever having seen this doll's head among my mother's things, but it is one of her own dolls and must be over 80 years old. They didn't have body patterns for this size of a doll, but I got copies of a smaller doll and instructions how to enlarge them. I also bought her socks and shoes so I can sew her feet the right size for them. This is an exciting project, as I have only sewn rag dolls (64 Unicef dolls over the years, plus some other rag dolls as a teenager) until now. I will show you if I ever get her finished.

 

 

 I'm still sorting my photos from England and will continue my travel report in the near future.

Girly time with daughter

On Monday I had a lovely time visiting my DD Kaija in her new home town for the first time.

As you can see, they have had some snow but the rains have taken it away. Luckily, it was not bone breaking slippery!

Kaija met me at the railway station and we had some mid-morning tea after my 3 hour train trip. Then she showed me the window display of the Craft Museum of Finland, as the Museum itself was closed on a Monday.

About 20 doll making artists had put together this scene from the President's Independence Day Reception. Imaginary, as they show a doll of our late President Kekkonen too, or maybe it is his ghost! The dolls were about 15" tall.

The cakes looked delicious:

There was a knitted graffiti on the door handle; a nice touch as long as it is not wet.

After spending some time at her home and seeing all her beautiful match boxes and other things, and exchanging Christmas presents, we went out for lunch and some shopping. Lucky girl, she has several second-hand bookstores (I bought just one book) within reach, more than one fabric shop (yes, I bought 4 metres of new fabric) and many other interesting places (yes, I bought some yarn too, and a lipstick).

Then it was time for me to thank Kaija for a lovely day and leave after a last cup of tea and gingerbread.

I hope you will have a chance to spend some time with all your loved ones at Christmas time.

Friends, Gifts and Dolls

Some time ago I received a gift from my dear friend Melanie. She was in Egypt earlier this year on holiday, and bought some beautiful handwoven cotton scarves there. After she made her lovely Helping Hands quilt, she sent pieces from all those scarves to each of us whose hands are shown on her quilt. As soon as I saw my new fabrics, I knew where to look for a pattern to use them and make something nice.

I have had this Kaffe Fasset book for a long time, and the handkerchief corner quilt on the cover has always pleased me. I'll show you the results later, the idea is just maturing now. Thank you, Melanie!

This week another dear friend sent me unexpected mail. This came from Simone:

Bicycles on the wrapping paper and the stamps (for Mr. K!) and the owl must be for me.

 

Inside was this cute little wallhanging for Halloween. Luckily I'm not afraid of spiders or ghosts. Thank you Simone! (Without my photo editing programme I can't turn the picture, so you'll have to tilt your head.) Simone is also one of the Helping Hands friends, and you can see what she did with her scarf  fabrics from Melanie if you scroll down her post in my link.

Finally a sneak peek at my dolls I'm making as Santa's little helper. They are my newest lot of "Anna ja Toivo" -dolls for Unicef. The names Anna and Toivo are also Finnish words and mean "give" and "hope". Very appropriate for dolls used to raise money for saving children's lives by giving them inoculations. Four pretty ones are at my sister's as I have outsourced the beautician's and hairdresser's services to her for the dolls going to her granddaughters.

Only one doll has a dress by now, but two dresses are in process and ideas for the other clothing are on paper. Everyone has at least undies, and they are sitting on the sofa near the fireplace so they are not cold. I think I'll knit some socks for them tonight.

Boy's stuff with Andy

Hi, this is Andy! Let me tell you about my adventure in the snow. She took me along yesterday to town, and we left Ann at home because the weather was so cold. I borrowed a cap from a nice bear who lives in the house too, and the scarf Ann used last time we were out in the snow. The guy who borrowed his cap is called Uppis, and he can write poems and all. He belongs to DS1. Here we are testing Mr. K's snow pushers and showel; they are a bit big for us.

So She took me with her and we walked to the station. On the way we saw several machines trying to open the roads for traffic and clear the parking lots. It was exciting!

This was a small tractor in the park. The path is funny, it only goes round a pond, and you have to cross the lawn - or in this case climb over a snow bank - to use this short cut to the local café or the beautician.

A bigger backhoe was clearing the parking lot between the two grocery stores. It would be fun drivng one of these!

A little pickup truck was pushing snow at the railway station. The driver didn't like Her taking pictures, and She was upset how unaesthetic the result was. Not the photos of course, but his job. He left an awful lot of loose snow on the ground, and made big snowbank in front of the mailbox.  Well, you have seen our yard and how He does things. Someone could call that style. The Art of Pushing Snow, by Mr. K.!

The roof of the underpass had snow caps on:

And there was no way we could sit on the bench waiting for the train. Luckily it was only ten minutes late, and we were sitting in the waiting room anyway.

Then we arrived in Järvenpää. Bigger town, bigger machines, She said, but I was a little nervous about this one:

It was coming right at us, and there was nowhere She could jump with her bad legs, anyway, because we seemed to be stuck between the backhoe and this:

Of course She didn't jump in the snow but kept a cool head (easy at these temperatures, I would say), and just took pictures of the giant:

... well, its tyre prints only.  Then the camera battery went flat or it was just too cold for it, and we didn't get a picture of a little pavement snow plow, or me drinking hot chocolate at the café (they don't put marshmallows in it here, but whipped cream is good too). She had just some tea and didn't eat anything, because She didn't want to go and brush Her teeth and leave me alone at the table. (I can't got to the Ladies, can I?) Did you know She has braces? She says they make her look younger. Some teenager, with grey hair and wrinkles and arthritis! She is a bit childish, though, and I can see that She likes playing with us.

After the chocolate we run her errands and went to her gym, and then  He came to meet us for the big grocery shopping and to take us home.

End of story. I think I will be friends with Uppis. I'll have a chat with him when I thank him for lending me his cap. It was a good one, but doesn't go too well with my hair (exactly the same color!). Ann had just been watching birds while we were away, and taking a nap. She gave us the little granny square blanket she made last spring when she first learnt to crochet those squares. Good for naps! OK, this is the end. Enjoy the snow! Maybe She   will knit me a beanie of my own, if I say Pretty Please? The End.

 

Just one more thing: the blanket picture is from last spring, of course, there is still an awful lot of snow here, and more is coming. Mr. K has grown some muscles pushing all that snow. Bye bye now!