Crafty Christmas Gift Making - Part II

 
LEFT: Doll for my Niece,                              and RIGHT: Neck Pillow for my Grandma

Further to my last post, I managed to squeeze in some more Christmas gift making last week.

Using a second-hand sewing machine I'd purchased back in summer on eBay (which is now permanently housed at my non-sewing Mother-in-Law's house) I was able to knock-up a quick Neck Pillow for my lovely 98 year old Grandma.

The pattern is FREE from BurdaStyle.com: Neck Pillow 12/2010 #143

The PDF instructions ask you to draft and draw the pattern yourself following a smaller-scale diagram they provide onto a 5 x 5 cm grid of squares. So... being short on time I totally cheated (LOL!); instead I grabbed a screen-shot  of the grid and pasted it into my 'CorelDRAW X3' software, and then I enlarged it to the correct size and I printed the pattern out over 2-A4 sheets of paper = 5mins work and job done!

It took me around 40mins to make (I omitted to add the piping - saving much time) including time to stuff with the innards of an el-cheapo *pillow I'd bought a few years ago at Tesco (*originally destined to be the stuffing in a Duct-Tape-Dummy which I never got around to making haha!).

I also found time to finish-off the Dolly, plus sew a cute dress + knickers for said doll for my 2½ year old Niece (I've been a v. bad Auntie as Dolly had been sitting in a bag sans coiffure since I first started the project as a 1st birthday pressie - eekk, better late than never I guess!).

Wee Wonderfuls - the Kit, Chloe & Louise Pattern

The pattern I used for the dolls is by Wee Wonderfuls - called the Kit, Chloe & Louise Pattern. The PDF includes full details to make the dolls, clothing and hair.

I bought the wool for the dolls hair back in July 2012 from Ridley Road Market. And, because I was pressed for time and I couldn't for the life of me find the original PDF instructions... I used these great tutorials I found to make the "hair" for the dolly: Waldorf Doll Hair Tutorial and Waldorf doll hair: centre back seam clarified by Meike of Crafty Sheep blog. 

To make the dress I drafted a pattern using paper wrapped/draped around the doll - following the approximate pattern-shapes found in The Itty Bitty Baby Dress Pattern by Made-by-Rae. And, now I have the pattern pieces I can make more dresses easily in the future! The dress is fully-lined, plus I made dolly some jersey-knickers too (so she's properly attired LOL!).

For the doll's face I embroidered the eyebrows in black thread, and the mouth in red. I used some Dylon pens to create the eyes (pressing them on a hot setting to fix-them).

To view more photos of the doll's construction see this Flickr slide-show below :) :

The 3 Boy's Ties I'd made for Hubby's 9 year old Nephew went down very well. He wore the green-one all day on Boxing day (photographic evidence below - although the happy grin on his face might have more to do with playing all-day on an iPad hehe!).

And Mum-in-Law and Dad-in-Law loved their Tablet-Pillows too.