More Human Every Day

Happy monday everyone! My kitchen has piles of dishes, the floors need a sweep and there is a small mountain range of laundry developing on my closet floor... but I made nice progress on my Waldorf doll! It was one of those weekends where I felt more crafty than tidy. I made a deal with myself to clean a little every day this week in order to make up for neglecting all of my "shoulds". It was well worth it because I feel like I really took a bite out of the project.

What was nice about this phase of the project was all of the couch-time it provided me. Lots of hand-sewing and stuffing. I was able to get through quite a few episodes of "Celebrity Ghost Stories" and "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" that were on my DVR. And hey, before you judge me for watching trashy celebrity reality TV, ask yourself how you could resist hearing Dick Van Patten or Christopher Knight (Peter Brady) tell their own real-life paranormal experiences. I mean really, I'm only human here!

Okay, back on track. So, I stretched the knit flesh-tone fabric over the head form and sewed it up the back of the head. It's not the most beautiful sewing I've ever done, but it is nice and tight and the seam will be covered up by the wig later.



From the picture in the directions, it seems like the head fabric was supposed to cover the entire 2nd ball of muslin. The fabric from the kit wasn't big enough to stretch over that part on mine. I'm sure the kit supplied contained the right amount of fabric and this was just "user error" on my part. So, I whip-stitched the bottom of the knit to the muslin to hold it tight.

Then I moved on to sewing the seams on the arms and legs:



I used a very open zigzag stitch (as recommended in the pattern) and double-stitched in areas that would have more stress on them. I then had these 3 components:



From here I proceeded to stuff the arms and the legs. I got really excited because it was starting to look like something, finally! And the cotton knit fabric felt so soft. I'm going to love this doll, I just know it. A while ago I head read on a blog that I love, Clean, that Rachel used some lavender in the body stuffing to make the doll smell good. I loved that idea so I took some bulk lavender and made a sachet to place in the center of the trunk of the body. I just took a piece of scrap fabric and sewed up a quick little pouch that would fit nicely in there.



The last part I was able to accomplish this weekend was to sew the arms to the head-shoulder area. Again, it is not my prettiest sewing, but I reinforced it 3 or 4 times and made sure it was durable. This area will be covered up by the body fabric so it's really not that big of a deal. I'm very concerned with this little guy being sturdy. I mean really, this is for a rough little boy who is more likely to play "construction site" or "superhero" with it than something gentle.



This Frankenstein creature is really creeping my husband out. I need to get this thing put together so that he can see how cute it really is. Talk to you soon!

Cassandra