Doll Post...FINALLY!

What's up, guys!

So, I finally got some time to sit down and write this doll post, which is just a little run-down of how I made this doll for my boy's sister (she went to an animé convention and wanted me to make her prop!)

I showed you this picture before, but here it is again - 

I used an old bed sheet for material.  I was going to go out and buy fabric in all the different colours I'd need but my awesome Mum found some dye we'd had in a cupboard for years and, as luck would have it, it was in the colours I needed!  So I got all my bits cut out and next, I needed to dye them!

I did exactly what it told me to do on the packet and it came out great (^_^) I used a cold water dye, for which I also needed a 'fixer' (to get the dye to stay on the fabric) and a whole heap of table salt!  I let the dye work it's magic for about an hour, moving the fabric around in the dye every fifteen minutes or so.

Here they are, drying on the line after being thoroughly rinsed in cold water!  As you can see, especially on the blue part, there was a little patchiness in the colouring.  I'm not sure why that happened, since I kept moving the fabric around in the dye but hey, it wasn't a massive disaster!  I can't believe that gorgeous, sunny, *warm* day was only a couple of weeks ago - it feels like an age!  Missing you, warm weather!

After my pieces were all dry, it was time to sew them together.  Now, I'm not a very proficient seamstress and what resulted was a lot of huffing, puffing, getting annoyed at my sewing machine, running out of thread and a couple of jams!  Finally, after about two hours of slow, steady stitching, this appeared - 

Using a piece of folded paper tucked in between the fabric (see top right!) I drew on all the features using a Sharpie marker.  Since I was shipping it to America I didn't want to stuff it here, so instead of stitching it closed I sewed velcro along the bottom of the doll, between it's teeny little legs - this meant it could be folded up nice and small for mailing and then stuffed when it got there, plus they didn't have to worry about sewing the doll together afterwards!

S *does* have a picture of his sister and the finished doll (which he has yet to send me) but when I get it, I'd like to post it up here so you can really see how big he is.  I'm *so* pleased with how he turned out, I never thought I'd be able to make something like this so I kinda surprised myself!  Yay for making dolls and trying new things!

So, in other news, I've had a hugely busy and pretty miserable week at work; instead of my regular hours, I ended up working two 12-hour shifts back to back (that's 6am-6pm two days in a row) and have spent most of my free time sleeping/dozing/napping and generally being a bit of a grump!  Hopefully now my manager is back from her holiday, things will start getting back to normal and I can take some time off!  S is still trying to figure things out on his end so we can push forward in our journey to be together.  It's really frustrating that I can't do anything here but I know he's doing his best and we'll make it work somehow (^_^) I hope you guys are all having an awesome weekend and you've got lots of amazing things planned for Halloween tomorrow!  Thanks for reading!

xoxo

♥Ắçĕ♥