In which a doll is born

Our sweet little Claire turned 4 years old this weekend. During the last month of my pregnancy I began working on a special doll for her, a baby doll. I knew I wanted it to look a bit like her new baby sister that was on the way. So with that in mind I set to work. I created a doll with arms and legs that are jointed and can move, to make dressing easier. Plus her new baby would be able to sit up and hug and do all of those fun things you need movable arms and legs for. I embroidered her baby's eyes to match Claire's own eye color as closely as possible. We had a very clear ultrasound picture of Violet at 36 weeks and her face shape was just like Claire's was as a newborn, so I carefully sculpted the new doll's face to have a sweet pointy chin, chubby kissable cheeks and a darling little nose, just like my sweet girls. Her skin is organic cotton, and her hair is a mohair and wool blend. It was a natural white, and we gathered black walnuts from our woods and I dyed her hair with them after I crocheted the little cap to the correct size for her head. She is firmly stuffed with wool. 

Ever since Violet was born 3 weeks ago, Claire has been watching everything I do with the new baby very closely. Doll play in our house has become much more serious business now! Claire has spent the past couple of weeks playing "mommy with a newborn". She mentioned how she wished one of her babies had short soft fuzzy hair, like my newborn. She also told me several times that she would like to have diapers for her baby, so she could change it's diapers. (Lately a very frequent occurrence that she has witnessed about a million times around here!) So I made her new baby a couple of diapers that close with velcro. The diapers turned out to be a very big hit! Claire's baby has had her diapers changed even more frequently than her baby sister's in the past few days. During the time I worked on the doll, Claire had no idea that I was making something for her! She was so surprised to open up her gift on her birthday

With everything that has been happening over the past few weeks I gave myself a break and decided not to make her handmade clothing right now. So she is being dressed in "real preemie baby" sized clothing for the time being. The little pale blue pixie hat with velvet ribbons and the embroidered violets on it was borrowed from my own little Violet Penelope! I made it from the softest cashmere sweater. The pink hat with matching tiny Mary Jane shoes were actually Claire's when she was a newborn! They were made for her by her adoring Grandmother!

Claire and I decided to wrap our new born babies up in their blankets and take pictures of them together. Playing Mommy with my sweet little girl is so much fun. 

Joining in with Nicole at Frontier Dreams today and Linda at Natural Suburbia. 

Craftiness and trying to stay sane...

So, yeah, I'm still pregnant. So considering the fact that I don't have any adorable new baby pictures to show you yet, I thought you might like to see what else we've been up to in the past month. (After we caught up on very much needed sleep and recovered from Ethan's illness of course!)

First up, there was sewing for the baby. Since she is due to arrive (any minute now baby please!!) during the coldest season of the year I made her a car seat canopy. My little ones spend almost no time at all in their car seats, much preferring to be held in a baby carrier or sling of some sort. However I like to put them in the car seat while we are still inside the house and cover everything up so they stay toasty warm on the way out to the car! We don't have a garage to park our car inside in this house, so walking through the weather has to happen when we leave to go anywhere! I called up my friend who I made the car seat cover for, over a year ago, and asked her if I could borrow it, to try and remember how I made hers...

 Close up of the fabric I chose for her canopy. Isn't it adorable? I love the floating bunnies and little girls!

And now for the part I'm really proud of. I actually ended up recovering her car seat. 

I very loosely followed the tutorial found here, for recovering the car seat. The picture below shows "why" I had to recover the car seat. I honestly had no intention of ever taking on such a big project this late in my pregnancy, but when I pulled the infant car seat out of our storage room and took the cover off of it to wash it, this is how it came out of the washing machine! It was frayed and falling to pieces! I had followed the manufacturer's recommended washing instructions exactly, and this was the first time in the life of the car seat it had ever been machine washed. I called the manufacturer and they said that since the seat was just over a year old, I would have to purchase a new cover for it... So I thought what the heck, I might as well give recovering the thing a try since, if that didn't work I'd still have a few weeks to buy a new seat cover and get it shipped to me. Well, not only did it work, it turned out super cute! I am so happy with how it looks! Much prettier than that weird plastic-y orange! 

Logan also has been rather crafty lately! He got invited to a friend's birthday party recently and had no idea what he should get for the girl. I suggested that he make her a T-shirt with her favorite video game character on it. He liked that idea, so he looked online for an outline to print out to use as a stencil. He found the design below, printed it out and very carefully cut it out of freezer paper. He then ironed the freezer paper onto a blank shirt he got from the craft store. He used fabric paint to carefully fill in the stencil and once it was dry he peeled the freezer paper back to reveal his shirt. It turned out great! He friend was thrilled with such a one of a kind gift and he was really thrilled with the fact that he had made it completely by himself!

At the end of October our three big boys when to a costume dance party hosted by our local homeschool group. Ethan went as a Plastic Army Man also known as a Little Green Army Man. I made his costume out of a large green tarp, and just used a simple pajama pattern for the shirt and pants. My sewing machine hated sewing that tough plastic! I broke 7 needles in the construction of that thing. One of the needle points even flew off and hit me in the corner of the eye! I was ok, but it hurt! I ended up wearing safety goggles to finish it! I spray painted his rubber boots and a Nerf gun bright green and we painted all exposed skin green using a water soluble face and body paint.. (The face paint stained his skin and for the following three days he looked a bit like Frankenstein's monster! ) 

Matthew wanted to dress up as Frodo Baggins the Hobbit. So I made his cape, vest and the pants were part of a costume that I made for Logan last year. The ring and the clasp for his cloak I got off of Amazon. 

Logan wanted to go as a Gentlemanly Steampunk Scientist. So, thankfully, he already had a Velvet coat with lace trim I had sewn him last year for his costume, which still fit nicely. He was entirely in charge of creating the rest of his costume, which consisted of a very interesting hat with a "steam" engine, copper piping, and various other gears and contraptions. He also had a copper coated gas mask, that he made, in case it was needed while escaping dastardly villains armed with noxious gases. I really didn't help him at all with his costume this year, except for offering a bit of advice when asked. He took charge of putting the whole thing together himself!

I am currently in the middle of making Claire a "baby" doll for her birthday, which is coming up in the middle of December. I'll try to get pictures of it soon. I also have several Christmas presents in the works that I plan on showing as I get them completed or nearly so. But first, honestly I'd really like to have this baby! I've been having super strong braxton-hicks contractions for over two weeks now. They'll get almost regular, and fool me into thinking that this must be it this time. You'd think that with this being my 6th baby I'd know for sure if I was in labor or not, but no it doesn't appear that way! I keep getting my hopes up only to have things peter out, with no baby to show for hours of contractions, and no sleep either! So I am trying to find little things to occupy my mind and hands because while I do feel perfectly fine, I just really don't have much energy at all at this point and everything tires me out so easily! 

I'm feeling like a bit of an emotional mess, because of a continual lack of sleep and not knowing when this little one is finally going to arrive! The end of pregnancy hormones aren't doing much to help that situation either! I was in the kitchen this morning making myself a cup of red raspberry leaf tea, when Logan came in to say good morning to me. I started crying for no reason and when he asked my what was wrong I had no good answer. The sweet boy just hugged me and said "You're just very pregnant aren't you." Yes, son that is all it is, I am just very pregnant!

*Updated on 11-26-13 to add that I am linking up with Nicole here and be sure to check out this beautiful project of ours that was a very long time in the making! She is practically perfect in every way! 

A doll and her baby

 This little doll and her baby doll were made for a sweet young friend of ours. Our friend has beautiful long blond hair, the cutest pert little nose and great big expressive blue eyes. So I tried to make her doll look a bit like her. I asked the girl's mommy if she could help me out with the yarn for the hair, since I was having a hard time finding something that seemed just right. She is a very talented spinner and whipped up this gorgeous yarn lickity-split. It's 100% soy silk and is the softest, silkiest yarn I've ever worked with.

After I finished the doll and her little wardrobe, she seemed to need a little playmate of her own! So I made her a dolly of her very own, complete with a tiny hand-stitched cradle, a soft, wool stuffed pillow and her very own knitted blanket, made to match the big doll's knitted shawl. I think she was pretty pleased with her tiny new playmate. To hold the big doll's shawl on, I thought she needed a pretty little shawl pin, so I made her one. It is topped with shiny little glass beads, very big-girlish in style we think!

*Waldorf Dolls Details- Big Doll:  stuffed with fluffy clean sheep's wool, with 100% cotton skin and 100% Soy Silk hair. Her clothes and shawl are handmade of 100% cotton. Tiny Doll: Body wool/Bamboo blend felt hand dyed by me, Skin, hair, and blanket are 100% cotton. Stuffed with clean carded sheep's wool.

Linking here and with Nicole and with Natural Suburbia.