64. What has happened to Philip

The weather has looked promising this morning. The sun was beginnig to shine more and more through the clouds that covered the sky before. Soon only few cloudlets were floating far on the horizon. It's going to be a lovely day, I thought,

... when suddenly I realised there was no Philip in the room. You know, Philip - my new doll. He was neither in his bed nor on the table where he used to sit; he was not even on the sill of the window he looked through so often. His new pillow disappeared too, I noticed.

H'm, there was still that fabric lying on the table I sewed Philip's pillow from.

I looked and saw some funny foxes playing in the dark forest that formed the pattern of the fabric. Quite a nice and fairy-tale scene that appealed to Philip, I remembered suddenly, 
so much. The foxes in the fabric looked at me curiously...

Is it possible that he walked to the forest himself?

And indeed I found Philip in the forest. I saw him lurking under a big tree.

First he looked for the foxes, said Philip later, but soon he got tired.

You were lucky, you might have met boars seeking food in this place.

Philip is a Waldorf  style boy-doll entirely handmade by me. 

He is 36 cm tall (14 inches).

He is all made from natural high quality materials:a special Swiss cotton jersey designed for dollmakers, clean washed natural sheepswool, embroidered threads and wool.

His clothes are sewn or handknit by me using natural good quality materials: cotton, velvet and wool.

I knew Philip liked sleeping so I made him a cotton pyjama: 
a blouse in a fox pattern (foxes again!)  and matching light-blue trousers 
sewn from cotton jersey.

He usually puts on a grey cotton T-shirt and dark-blue velvet trousers. 

The T-shirt is easy to put on since it is cut at the back and has snap fasteners 
with wood buttons.

I sewed on a big pocket on his trousers for collecting treasures like shells, pebbles, 

different strings and other things Philip would hopefully find on his walks.

Obviously he possesses colourful knickers sewn from cotton jersey and short socks.

Philip's shoes are sewn from navy wool. They have a lemon linen and shoe-laces of the same colour. The laces are long enough to make it easy to tie them. I stitched down a button on each shoe to easily distinguish the right shoe from the left one (a good exercise for a child playing with a doll, isn't it?). They are very comfortable, says Philip.

When it is cold Philip puts on a wool cardigan, a hat and a neckerchief 
to protect from wind or just for fun.

In the end I must mention that Philip has also got a woolen ball to play with and this famous pillow which caused him to walk to the forest and look for the foxes at night.

**

This wee boy is looking for a family.

If you would like to adopt him, he is available here on my blog.

Philip is suitable for children aged four or older.

If you need more information please contact me at  kbm.1507@gmail.com

I will be happy to answer your questions.

You will also find more photos and information about Philip here.

**

Thank you for dropping by.

Have a pleasant day.

60. Playing with a ball

This is Philip who you already know - my new Waldorf boy doll.

Today Philip was ready to go outdoors early in the morning. 

He had his woolen hat on and even started putting on his cardigan 

when we both noticed looking at the window panes that they were getting wet with rain.

"No, that's awful. It's raining again.", sighed Philip.

Resigned he turned away from the window and quickly took down the hat from his head.

Don't worry, said I, You can play here at home.

And I showed him something: Look, what lovely blocks they are.

I said that but I too remembered that we planned to go for a big stroll to the lake.

Too bad, I heard him muttered.

Well, maybe..., I thought looking at Philip's tee-shirt, 
...I might make him a ball.

*

Ans after some time a colourful little ball lay close 
to the blocks Philip was playing with.

He caught the ball and looked thrilled to try to throw it into the air.

Philip did not worry any more. He was pleased  throwing and catching the ball 

and he even tried to kick the ball. Oh...

What a great play, he repeated.

Finally he sat to have a rest.

(Dolls are sometimes tired too.)

Thanks for dropping by.

I hope you have a lovely week!


*

Philip will be looking for a home soon, so stay tuned.

58. My new doll

I truly do not know how it happened but I made a boy doll. For the first time. 

His name is Philip.

Yesterday we went for a stroll in search of spring.

It was sunny, a bit chilly. Near the little lake we heard birds singing intensely as in the springtime.

*

Thank you for visiting my blog here.

I wish you a lovely weekend!

I am inviting you for our next walk.

We will visit the same or different place and we 'll be looking for more signs of spring approaching.

Tonight I am joining "A Soulful Life" for Soulful Fridays.

55. Amy and the children or We come to a close of "Puppenmitmacherei" project

As we are drawing to a close of making dolls together in the event "Puppenmitmacherei",

a project organised by Maria from "Mariengold" and Caroline from "Naturkinder", 

I am inviting you to my final day. 

Last Wednesday the wether was bad in Wrocław. It was cloudy and rainy. 

Nevertheless neither me nor Amy paid attention to it, because we were occupied with preparations for an appointment we had on that day. So exciting!  We were invited by Mrs. Ola Węgrzyn to visit children in her small Waldorf nursery school called "Słoneczko".

When we came children already waited for Amy. They were really curious to get to know her and to learn what she was like. We started taking about Amy, about how she would love to be with children and play with them.

They immediately became fond of Amy. I took a few photos and decided to look and listen.

From the beginning Amy's clothes seemed were important. The children glanced at them willingly and then started experimenting with them. So they took them off  first, and then they redressed Amy. 

They soon discovered Amy was lovely to touch. They hugged her, held her hands, stroked her hair... and they talked a lot. One girl wanted to be Amy's Mum, another one her dad, and an aunt, and so on.

Then they had an idea to put Amy to bed. But first they wanted to put on her bootees. They examined them carefully. They really liked them. While Rose put on the bootees, another girl held Amy's head. Did you notice how delicate and careful she was?..

Then Amy went to sleep.

No, no. Before Amy fell asleep she wanted to have her hands lying on the quilt, 
not under it. 

So the children did, as she wished."Are you all rigth now?".. - they asked.

Amy's bed was placed in the play corner and Amy could sleep.

Her "Mummies" stayed with her stroking her cheek and singing her a little song...

After a little while Amy woke up.

It was then that I took this photo of Amy with the children and Ola.

As you may expect Amy stayed with the children.

The next day Ola emailed me, "Amy united the whole kindergarten in a big family: there was Mum, Dad, sisters and brothers, cousins and all possible folks."She added: "For a long time I haven't seen such a good and peaceable play of all children." I was proud of Amy. Well, well such a little cloth doll, I thought, and she evoke so many good feelings in children - liking, sympathy, care, joy.

Yes, children love cloth dolls.

In the end I would like to thank Ola for the invitation. Thanks to her kindness I spent a lovely afternoon with the children from her kindergarten. 

I do not worry about Amy any more. She has met a big loving family. Is there anything else that such a little doll could dream about?

*

It is a bit sad that the project "Puppenmitmacherei" is about to finish and that this is my last post dedicated to it, but on the other hand I am glad I have met a lot of new dollmakers.

I would like to thank Maria from "Mariengold" and Caro from "Naturkinder" for the idea and organisation of the project, for their advice and lots of tips on how to make dolls. 

I would like to thank all participants in the project. Beautiful dolls were created and wonderful stories written. On their blogs you can find plenty of interesting comments and reflections devoted to doll making.


And above all my special "thank you" to my lovely readers.
Sometimes my posts were delayed, so I am really grateful you waited patiently.


I wish you all a lovely weekend.

For the last time here you will find all participants' blogs (Scroll down to the end of page please.)

54. "The doll's wardrobe" or a delayed Day 5 in "Puppenmitmacherei" project

It snowed yesterday morning for the first time this autumn. For a short while we had lovely white fresh snow which sadly melted away quickly. It seems winter is slowly approaching.

So I am glad my doll already has clothes.

Not only has she clothes, she has also her name. I could say "at last!", because as a matter of fact I do not like talking about my dolls namelessly. Usually when I make a doll, her name pops up together with the doll herself. 

Obviously it was different this time, since I  concentrated more on the construction,
technique and viewing blogs of the colleagues participating in the project.

However at times I pondered on the name of my doll who was slowly taking shape. It seemed to me that she downright required more than just calling her "doll" or "dolly"...

And I called her Amy. 

I can see that Amelia enjoys coloured clothes, above all red and yellow as her favourites. It appeals to me, especially that she likes yellow reminding of the sunny summer.

Do you agree with me that Amy looks like a little child in appearance? 

I will try to accentuate this in her clothes. 

First I made her a cotton dress in her favourite colour (red, of course). Then I hand knitted warm bootees from wool in a shade of brown and red. In addition I made lovely socks from cotton jersey in the colour of the hot summer sun. When I dressed  her Amy looked really happy.

Later I found some red wool just to knit Amy's cardigan and from light alpaca I knitted a sweet bonnet and a big warm shawl. I do hope Amy will gladly wear it when the weather changes and winter comes.

Sometimes Amy sits on the book and watches illustrations, especially those with children. 

It seems she would love to play with them.

Here she is admiring "The sun egg" by Else Beskow.

Well, the project is about to finish soon and I am curious to know what will happen to Amy and what she will be doing in the future.

Hope you have a good week!

I am inviting you to our last project meeting in December.

And here is a link to our network of all participants. (Please scroll down to the end of post.)

More information about the project you will find here.

52. "Puppenmitmacherei" - 2nd online Meeting: Preparations

Welcome to the Second Day of making dolls together in an online event "Puppenmitmacherei". Today I will show you the patterns I have prepared and then I will sew individual doll parts I am going to work on in the upcoming meetings. However before I do this let me look in on Maria's blog (Mariengold) who together with Caroline (Naturkinder) have organised Puppenmitmacherei.

http://www.mariengold.net/puppenmitmacherei-vorbereitungen-2/

What does Maria write about? She recapitulates our previous work and accurately specifies our second meeting tasks. That is, we already know what we want to sew. We know more or less what our doll will look like. We have our patterns ready or make modifications we talked about before. Now we can lay the tricot that will be used for the doll body and put the patterns on, mark the contours of the patterns, cut them out and sew the doll parts by sewing machine or by hand. Simple, isn't it? It looks so, but I am sure all of us know how important all these elements are. I like the straight and systematic way Maria presents successive steps of creating a doll. In addition she gives lots of useful tips and practical suggestions. It is worth reading.

My doll will be rather small.

Asuuming she will be 36 cm tall I have prepared patterns accordingly. On Day 1 I thought of a different pattern, but eventually I decided on a classic pattern with such proportions where the doll head is one fourth of the whole height of the doll. I used a typical Waldorf doll pattern with a body and legs as one piece. When I prepare a particular pattern I usually make some small changes. This time I too modified the pattern a bit. I think I slightly slimmed the legs and subtly changed the shape of the body. Much more attention I paid to the arms. I wanted them to be bent more than the hands of my previous dolls. That is how I visualized it. I made a new arm pattern I would test in our upcoming meeting.

My Waldorf style Dolls - Puppenmitmacherei.2
The doll pattern

I sewed the doll parts by sewing machine (applying a double simple elastic stitch) with the use of a strong polyster sewing thread. The contours of the patterns were marked with the use of a plain pencil and air-erasable pen.

My Waldorf style Dolls - Puppenmitmacherei.2
Here I have the doll body sewn... Now I will be sewing the arms.

Now that I have the doll parts sewn and ready I will put them aside for a while, because now I am going to work on the doll head, For me it is the most interesting step in the process of creating a doll. And this will be one of the topics in our next meeting. 

So far I have always begun making a doll with the forming of the doll head. In this project we have started with the making of the body and limbs first which is quite new for me. Well, I enjoy this project and I am glad I will try some new approaches and methods. I must remember however and check if the head of my planned doll will not exceed 9 cm in diameter!
At this stage you can view my doll in the photo below. She looks like that.

My Waldorf style Dolls - Puppenmitmacherei.2
The doll parts are sewn and ready to be stuffed.

Have a lot of fun.

I will see you on September 2 (our third meeting), when my doll will be ready!

And now I am leaving to visit my colleagues. I wonder what they are writing about and what their dolls look like.

Here is a link to all participants of our second meeting.

51. Puppenmitmacherei - Day 1 dedicated to ideas and inspiration

As you may know I have decided to take part in the online event called "Puppen mit macherei", meaning "making dolls together" in English. The event is organised by "Mariengold" and "Naturkinder", known in the doll making world. What is it about? Its purpose is to gather a group of participants (thirty-eight at the moment), not necessarily doll makers, who will make their own dolls and report about it on their blogs. We will be meeting online once a month till December. Great idea, isn't it? Of course we will communicate, exchange experience and views, learn from each other and admire other colleagues' work. This will be trully sewing dolls together.

http://www.mariengold.net/tag/puppenmitmacherei-2015/

My first doll OLA I made myself was for a little girl. Here she is in this photo below. (More about her here.)

My first doll Ola.

I became interested in doll making quite accidentally about three years ago, when listening to the radio I heard the programme about Waldorf dolls often called dolls with soul. It was a kind of

50. And if I...?Yes, why not.

It is lovely to lie on the sandy beach.

It is warm... We sit in the sun just emerging from beyond the clouds. But soon the sun disappears and  it gets cold for a change. However it does not last long, because the sun finds a wee bit of hole in the clouds and it shines and lightens the beach again. 

It looks like a kind of game we all sitting on the beach patiently observe.

Lettie settles herself next to me. She does not sit on the sand however, but on the spread little blanket she always carries with her.

"How funny she is with this blanket." - I think to myself.

Resting against the wooden stake, Lettie looks curiously at the lines on the sand, shaped by the blowing wind. She even feels sharp grains of sand on her cheeks. "Now that is strange." - I can hear her comment.

The beach, however, turned out to be a boring place for Lettie. A nearby slope seemed much more interesting. There she noticed a withered uprooted tree and some small bushes. And she discovered it sitting quietly on her blanket.

Suddenly she got up and ran towards the tree.

"Be careful, Lettie! Or you'll tear your tummy."

"Oh, don't worry. I look after myself." - answered she climbing the tree trunk.

"Yeah, this is superb. It is great here!" - she shouted at me with excitement.

I looked at her pink head. She was a sweet doll.

When I pondered over Lettie's hair I did not presume it would be pink.
I was becoming convinced about pink colour  little by little while working on my previous doll
Tosia-Reddie who considered pink as the most beautiful colour on our planet.
So when Lettie emerged I thought at some point - "And if  I chose...? Yes. Why not...
She's going to have pink hair."

In this way Lettie came to me quickly as the doll with pink hair.

Have you noticed the twinkles in Lettie's eyes? I saw them first in the doll created by Agnieszka Nowak (Lalinda). I liked them so much that I embroidered similar in my Lettie's eyes.

 I really took my time with her - sewing all the little stitches, creating both her appearance and her own little personality. I hope you like her as much as I do.

Lettie is looking for her new home... 

Lettie has found Roksanka.

Thanks for dropping in. Have a good day!

49. Lettie. A Joyful Doll

This is  Lettie, my new doll I hand made in a Waldorf style.

As you can see she has brown eyes, and her hair is pink. Lettie's complexion is darker than my other dolls', as her face and body are in a warm light brown colour.

When I saw her for the first time, she was sitting under the tree near a little creek. 
Just here.

Oh, surely she noticed me. She moved and sat close to the stream... 
and after a while she looked at me curiously.

"Hi, I like playing outdoors, especially when it is as warm as today." - I heard her speaking.

"Do you really?" - I said thinking that her voice did not surprise me at all. It sounded cheerful and a bit resonant.

"Yes, I do." - answered she.

"Do you know my name?" -  she was inquiring.

No, I don't know. How should I know? There are so many names. No, I can't say...

"I am Lettie. That is my name." - she declared proudly.

Apparently she looked very satisfied with her name.

Lettie looked around and sat on the grass. She liked the place. 
There were plenty of spring flowers round about with some last year's leaves scattered in places.

"I'm going to play now." - she said to herself.

***

Lettie is about 14" tall. She is all made from natural high quality materials that are wonderful to work and play with.

To make Lettie I used the following materials:

* body - a special cotton jersey designed for dollmakers (Swiss cotton with Oko-Tex label) in a warm light brown colour;

* stuffing - from top to toe the doll is firmly stuffed with clean carded sheepswool. That is why she is soft and warm.

* eyes, nose and lips - embroidered with floss in different colours;

* cheeks - delicately coloured with red wax crayon;

* HAIR - Lettie has rich pink mohair hair. I made it from beautiful soft and extra long fibre mohair in a pale pink shade (DollyMo Wild Mohair). Mohair is hand dyed using natural dyes Pink (little oke dolls). The doll's hairstyle can be easily changed, and it needs to be finger styled. From time to time you can comb her hair using a comb with rare teeth to make it more fluffy or longer.

Lettie's clothes are as follows:

* light dress - sewn from a delicate cotton, embellished with a white ricrac edging and a light pink lace.  The dress is easy to put on since it is cut at the back. It has snap fasteners with complementary beautiful vintage mother of pearl buttons 

* spring turquoise cardigan - hand knitted (100% cotton);

* bootees - hand knit (adopting LePouPz pattern). I used a cotton yarn in a warm apricot shade. The bootees are embellished with two ribbons and vintage mother of pearl buttons.

* hat - hand knit from the same warm apricot cotton yarn I used for the bootees;

* hair-slide in an apricot-orange shade;

* as a Waldorf doll Lettie wears a pair of blue polka-dot panties.

I made Lettie with a lot of love, many careful stitches and attention to detail.

***

Many thanks for dropping in.

Happy days!