baby, baby, baby twooooo

as it turns out, the issues with getting the rest of the post about elliot’s doll have less to do with a) the length of the post or b) me actually writing the post or even c) me actually photographing the rest of the stuff i made her and more of d).

‘d)’ of course being “photographing the stuff without elliot trying to be in it”

although the doll and bed were presented as one unit, she’s thoroughly convinced—in the headstrong oblivious-to-reality way that only a toddler can fully muster up—that this tiny bed is for her to nap upon.

she gets pretty bent out of shape if you try and put Baby in. it was a fight to get even a couple of shots that did not include her valiant attempts at folding her body in such a way as to be comfortably ensconced on that tiny poster bed.

but i did manage a few.

Baby got a sweet little wooden bed from IKEA. for $20 it comes with the dark blue “mattress pad” and “pillow” and a little plaid blanket.

duktig image via IKEA site

it came home like the above picture, but it got the googiemomma upgrade: a paint job, new quilt and coordinating pillow.

when i bought the fabric for the little quilt at joann’s i glanced through their spray paint selection for a color that matched. oooh, coral isle. perfect. but our joann’s keeps the spray paint under lock and key, requiring an employee to come to your aid. because you know, all the rowdy graffiti arteests and inhalant huffers head first to joann’s for their drug/tool of choice. :/

anyway, the other issue is that they charge $8 a can for spray paint?!?!?! one can only assume they are not familiar with the pricing of spray paint in the rest of the world.

puh. i’ll show them. i’ll just nip off to the local walmart…err…sears hardware…nope, maybe a.c. moore?…nooo…lowes? strike 4.

NO ONE, i repeat NO ONE else apparently carries krylon spray paint in coral isle.

(do you follow me on instagram? cause i’m pretty much the awesomest instagrammer ever.)

i drove around for an hour before sheepishly heading back into joann’s. come to think of it, maybe that’s why their paint is under lock and key. all their exclusive colors are the craft world equivalent of gold blocks.

regardless, i got my paint (40% off coupon whatwhat!?!) and that stinkin’ bed sucked up the ENTIRE can.

i bought a fat quarter pack of d.s. quilt fabrics (also with a coupon making it only $6) and a 1/2 yard remnant of white fleece for the tiny quilt and pillow.

i did 8 squares of each pattern and 16 white fleece squares, all cut 2 1/2” square. the back is solid white fleece and i free motion quilted in a random squiggly pattern over the whole thing.

that gave me fits—almost enough to turn me off of machine quilting for good. but after consulting with some Super Quilter Friends (similar to the Super Friends just more cozy and covered in thread bits) i’m thinking the thread i was using is the biggest issue.

anyway, it was done and i had fabric to spare, so why not whip up a little matching dress for Baby?

a simple little dress with a back velcro closure, and i attached the magnetic binky to the dress with the ribbon that came wrapped around my fat quarter pack (waste not want not, amirite?) now we have no loss of the binky and a perfectly coordinated set.

snug as a (handmade) bug in a (quilted) rug.

now get that baby out. it’s time for elliot’s nappy.

so that’s it. one baby doll, two clean diapers, one poopy diaper, one bed, one pillow, one quilt, one dress, one magnetic binky, oh! and one fabric tissue box thingy with six squares of the leftover white fleece inside—boom! wipes.

haha! forgot about that. i just cut the remainder of the white fleece from the back of the quilt into square-ish shapes and serged the edges. the little container is a basic little box that velcros closed on top and has a hole cut out so the “wipes” can pop out.

okay, now that’s really, really it. Baby is quite happy in her new home, the recipient of much love and many rather rough diaper changes. and that’s just the way i like it.

baby, baby, baby ohhh…

with four little girls—and yes, even my one boy (although years from now i’m not certain he’ll be happy this is on the internet so we’ll just say mainly the four girls) i’m sure you can imagine that we have no shortage of baby dolls around here for playing with. truly at this very moment i can walk into the family room and trip over no less than a dozen in various stages of undress—clothes and shoes and plastic paraphernalia scattered about.

but. BUT. i’m growing and changing and it’s taken me almost 13 years of motherhood to learn some muy importante lessons. it goes back to the overalls and really even the blankets—same principle, different application. handmade. momma-made. made for comfort, made with love. one hand-sewn wool and natural material baby doll over a dozen plastic disposable ones.

i set out to make a REAL baby doll for elliot. and jeremy and i discussed the fact that she may well hate it. it wouldn’t be the first time a child hated a doll i made them. but i persevered—secure in the knowledge that eventually it would be appreciated and loved.

now before i show you elliot’s baby doll i need to warn you—i’m the kind of mom that calls a spade a spade. or, in this case, if i’m making a girl baby doll, it’s gonna be a girl baby doll ifyaknowwhati’msayin’. i don’t buy into sexless gender neutral babies in general. it’s a fact of life and a part of their body and it should be addressed as such because there’s nothing shameful or embarrassing about it.

all that to say: warning, this baby’s got a cooch. ;) and what’s more—she’s got a belly button and a hiney and a poopy diaper. and you’re gonna see it all if you keep scrolling.

meet Baby.

she’s based on the waldorf doll style, and i loosely followed the same tutorial i used to make the peyton doll last year. (tutorial found HERE, peyton doll post found HERE)

there are some changes this time around. i added padding to the chin and cheeks for a fuller face. and i’m still battling what’s apparently called in the doll-making world “ghost neck”—that wrinkling around the chin area. but this one is better than the peyton doll.

i went through the same issue with the arms again—making i believe six different (ugly and unusable) arms before i realized this issue wasn’t ME or the FABRIC—i wasn’t happy with the shape of the arm pattern i was using. duh. so i redrafted it and i’m much happier.

her head is made from pure wool covered with dolskin—yes, that’s what it’s called. the hardest part of doll making is finding a good color for skin fabric. i finally broke down and ordered this online where you can choose from colors like “blush” and “sun-kissed”, and while the color was perfect, i wasn’t crazy about the fabric itself. quite a bit thinner than i expected, and prone to runs. but Baby is a bit less…err, anemic looking than Peyton dolly. which is a good thing i think.

do you like her binky?

elliot is obsessed with baby binkys, even though she never really used one. now please don’t send me hate mail or warnings because i’m content that what i’ve done is SAFE. Baby has a small yet powerful magnet hidden behind her mouth. the only way to get at it would be with a sharp pair of scissors, and if elliot has those then i think the magnet is the lesser problem.

i took a binky we had lying around (because when your baby uses them you can’t ever find one TO SAVE YOUR LIFE, but apparently when your baby doesn’t use them you can still find them floating around 2 years later) and cut off the nipple part. i glued in another magnet then secured the whole works with clear sealer stuff—the whole thing is encased in a clear hard cover basically, so while you can see the magnet—trust me—that bad boy is NOT coming out.

magnet to magnet, binky stays firmly attached. boom. happy baby.

here comes nekkie Baby:

elliot loves every part of this doll. she’s a very smart kid, and recognizes the similarities: the toes! the belly button! the butt! she was amazed and excited by it, pointing out and naming everything. kids are like that, right? they notice any little difference. 

here’s one lousy photo of her changing Baby’s diaper for the first time. she was seriously amazed by the belly button and bottom.

you can’t see her face, but trust me—she loves it.

Baby is stuffed and weighted with special little pellets made for stuffing and weighting, um…stuffed things. it makes her really nice to hold, and the little pebbles give her bottom a bit of a cellulite-y appearance. ha.

i love how the big fat belly is so much like a real newborn baby’s shape—that fat round belly and scrawny little chicken arms and legs.

her hair. oh the hair! i don’t care for the look of yarn hair. i used embroidery floss on the peyton dolly, which was cute but very time consuming.  and i wasn’t totally satisfied with the results—i wanted something more natural looking, but really couldn’t find any definitive answers on how to get that in any of the online tutorials i read.

eventually i decided to give natural wool roving a try. i bought a needle punch and small pack of this brownish-reddish roving at joann’s and dove in.

you hold the roving where you want it and then punch punch punch with the tool, the idea being that the fibers of the roving will push through the “skin” layer to the natural wool stuffing i made the head from, where they will bind together to secure it. miranda from one little minute did a needle punch design on a sweater HERE if you’re interested in some other applications. it’s a really cool process—one i’m excited to do again on more projects (possibly a sweater like miranda’s?)

two nights in front of the tv and Baby had a head full of soft reddish hair. if the babes i made in my ute didn’t get my red hair then the ones i make with my hands will.

as for how it holds up? well, we’ll see. it’s pretty secure, but elliot just got her baby yesterday. so secure when i make it vs. secure enough when she drags it around a while??? i’ll update…

i wasn’t happy with just a baby doll though. i needed diapers! and not just clean diapers—poopy diapers! if you follow me on instagram you may have seen my post asking for opinions:

which felt color makes the best baby poop? spoiler alert: mustard yellow. we’re breastfeeding advocates up in hurr.

quick poo making tute, just cause someone’s gotta do it:

1. draw a poo shape on appropriately colored felt.
2. sew two layers of felt together. trim edges and clip corners (we wouldn’t want messy poo, right?) cut a slit in the center of bottom layer.
3. turn poo right side out.
4. lightly stuff that poo.
5. position on diaper and topstitch down.
6. finish diaper.

googiemomma: leading the internets in tasteless tutorials since 2010.

i do my baby doll diapers from one layer of fleece and one layer of just white cotton. cut diaper shape, sew right sides together, turn right side out, topstitch. i used pink velcro to make little tabs for the front.

i did one poopy diaper and two clean diapers.

so there you go. and that’s really all i planned on doing. this size baby fits quite well in premie sized sleepers, and so that’s what i was going to dress her in.

but i’m nothing if not an over-achiever, so i didn’t stop there. oh no i didn’t. however…i read once that people generally give up reading something after about 1000 words and this is probably close to 10,000 at this point so what say we cut it here and address the rest tomorrow? good? good.

random thoughts + a discount code

happy monday, peeps. i’ll be back later in the week with some new projects. in the meantime...

o1) thanks for all the love on my whale stuffie pattern! i was happy so many people commented to tell me they were going to make one.

question though: how do we feel about me putting some up for sale in ye olde etsy shop? (which is quite bare at the moment ::cheesy grin::)

o2) e-shakti is offering googiemomma readers a 20% DISCOUNT when you shop online! pick yourself up something pretty, and think of that 20% as a gift from me to you ;)

you can read my e-shakti review here, and check out their new spring line here.

some of the pretties i’m currently crushing on:

retro style zigzag print dress          tux front poplin a-line dress

vintage denim chambray dress             make a beeline poplin dress

tiny heart print crepe dress          nautical crepe print maxi dress

 

simply use code GGEMMM at checkout for your 20% discount, valid now through 3/20/13—so get shopping!

o3) we are weaning. by ‘we’, obviously i mean elliot and i. well, mainly elliot, since i’m fairly certain i was weaned 31+ years ago.
it’s very bittersweet and i’m not gonna lie there were tears—from both of us (actually more from me) but it’s time to be done—wait, my merit badge just came in the mail, let me quick sew print it out and hot glue it on…

OOH! and i got the golden badge too!

that’s for holding Breastfeeding Mother Status totaling 95 months or more! wow. i almost want to push it another five months to get my platinum badge.

sheesh. i’ve spent just shy of 8 years of my life nursing someone.

seriously though…it’s very, very hard knowing this is it. she’s our last (yes, she IS.) and this is my last trip down this road. it feels like we’re closing the door on the chapter of our life entitled “Babies”. and while i’m excited about all the adventures in the coming chapters…i really like having babies around.

so, you know…fair warning that i’m feeling rather sappy these days. and that might pour out a touch in this here blog.

o4) also, tossing around an idea for a blog series in may. more deets to come.

xoxo,
googiemomma out.