a little homemade stuffed dolly

About 2.5 weeks ago, Foofie decided she wanted to make a stuffed doll.  Fabulous!  And she hoped to have it finished in about 3 days so it would be ready to give to a baby whose family was going to China for many months.  Not so fabulous!

Foofie found a doll to make online and watched a little video tutorial and then showed me what she hoped to create.  I tried to talk her out of it.  I told her this doll would probably take about 12 hours ... plus I would have to help quite a bit ... not to mention she was trying to read at least 4 hours per day for a reading contest.  So ... it didn't seem like the best idea given that she (WE) only had 3 days to work on it.  Foofie was undaunted ... and in her mind ... the doll just HAD to be made.  I went along with her ...

We searched around our house for fabric.  Foofie traced and cut out the pattern on paper.  Then, she cut out the fabric shapes and I explained to her about seam allowances and the right/wrong sides of fabric (and how things are often sewn on the inside).  I was happy that she was interested in sewing and was learning ... and I told her this was a "home economics" unit :)  She sewed a leg up first and stuffed it.  It was hard to flip and stuff because it was so tiny and Foof laughed about how she thought the leg would be so big ... but it ended up so small (because it gets rounded and because of the seam allowance -- which sometimes was too small and so I had to do a little surgery stitching up little holes in the legs). She asked me to sew the arms (as they are even smaller than the legs) and she inverted them and stuffed them.  We had a tough time figuring out what to do for the eyes.  First, I embroidered eyes on ... but they looked goofy.  So we ripped them out and searched for buttons.  The first set of buttons were too dark ... so those came off.  This was quite a process!  I sewed yellow eyebrows on ... and then took those off.  When we went out to dinner on Friday night (August 7) to celebrate my in-laws 50th Anniversary .... we brought the doll with and I sewed throughout the meal.  The doll was pretty much assembled on Friday night and Foof stuffed her and I stayed up late fortifying her arms and legs with tiny stitches on the outside.  I wanted this doll to be fairly durable after all of the time that had gone into it.  But she still wasn't done.  The head was still open and I wanted to restitch her mouth in the morning ... if there was time.

Saturday morning, Foofie and I got up early to finish and deliver the dolly.  Foofie was sewing the head while I was driving!  When we got to their house, we parked and I did a few more stitches to close a little gap where the head and neck didn't quite meet.

Foofie was thrilled that it was finished in time and delighted to present it to its recipient :)

One the ride home, I told her that the next time she gets an idea like this and I don't think it is very feasible ... she will need to take my word for it and think of something else :)  All in all though ... it was a good learning experience ... and I look forward to making another one someday ... in a more leisurely time frame however :)