Melted

When I saw the doll that a friend had made for her daughter, I melted. These days sitting on the couch, doing some crochet and avoiding complex thinking, are best for me. But I'm not experienced in crochet at all. Apparently that doesn't matter with this free pattern. You could give it a try too! And mind the other ones, that are great as well! Everyone who knows Ravelry, knows these dolls. But I didn't untill now...

This one is a birthday present for L.

As in my mind

Some weeks ago I was attending a dentist visit with my youngest, and while waiting I was flipping through a magazine. When my eyes fell on the picture above, I knew all of a sudden how L's birthday dress would be. And this idea was there to stay; the egg hàd to come out soon after.

At first I was thinking about the fabric. It had to be cotton and stepped or at least have some embossment. As our fabric shop only sells polyester lining fabrics, I considered to buy and use this coverlet of Ikea. Finally I decided to make the stepped cotton fabric myself, and was able to choose color, thread and topstitch.
A relatively thin fiberfill layer was added between lining and outer fabric. I first cut the pattern pieces, as used before and found in this book, and then topstitched horizontal in the color of the fabric and on 60° with yellow thread.

The circular skirt I turned inside out to avoid a seam at the bottom of the skirt. After finishing the body piece, I measured it's bottom line to be sure about the size of the circle I had to cut out of the skirt. How to make the cap sleeves I found as well on Griet's blog.

For the accent edging I chose yellow and a salmon pink in the color of L's cheeks. As you can see I wanted to avoid a shoulder seam in the yellow part of the edge.

About the topstitching a final note: my head wasn't able to finish this laborious job. I decided to decrease the number of yellow lines of the skirt. And I was happy about that: the handmade look of the fabric is more obvious now and I like the change of embossment, something you might not see at once, but only when you look closely. This kind of perception on different scales is my cup of tea.

2015

2015 has begun. That deserves an overview of the last year of Lightbluegrey!
At the same time, let's be open-hearted: the second half of last year I got ill and I won't be back at work soon either. The collage shows that the level of productivity on my blog wasn't that high. I'm happy to tell that recently something came out of my hands again, and that made me happy.
But there are doubts. Doubts about blogging. Doubts about showing things to the world or keeping them privately. After all those years I have doubts about sharing things and my longing for approval. Do I need this? Anyway, as I'm not able right now to decide to quit or not, I will bother you with some blog news soon :).

Thanks for visiting my blog in 2014. Wishing you all a creative 2015!