January 2024 /3

Welcome to you all. A week of dry and warmer weather down here in Cornwall, has been so welcome. Frogspawn has appeared in our pond; I do hope it survives, as I am sure we are not through with very cold weather quite yet! It is great to see little clumps of snowdrops appearing, as well as crocus with their gorgeous bursts of bright yellow.

I have been totally unable to access WordPress on my laptop over the last week. This is the site I use to write my blog. When I log in, it just tells me I have no account! Very unhelpful, and so frustrating! I have spent far too many hours trying to find the reason, in vain sadly, so this is a short post to give me an opportunity to try writing a post on my Samsung tablet!

I am thoroughly enjoying stitching my scarf and will show more as it progresses. Today I have made freezer paper templates for the doll, and am considering making the entire doll’s body in Patchwork. It will possibly drive me insane, so I will just have to wait and see.

The photograph above shows the individual body sections I have deconstructed. From the left is the leg, and the small oval shape is the base of the foot. Next is the arm, and the slim shape to the right of the arm is half of the back of the trunk.

The section with the 3D image at the top, which I have left intact as a guide for when I get to stitching this stage, is the front half of the head, sewn to the side template of the head. The two templates below it are the two templates involved, and the front of the body is lying at the foot of the section.

I have made a stitchline using black thread, all around each fabric piece, stitching on top of the machine holes left after deconstruction. The seam allowance was tiny and frayed very easily as I was working on the doll. I can only surmise that I trimmed the seams far too close to the machine stitchline, before I stuffed it all those years ago! The black stitch line is my guide to the finished size of each template.

I have actually made my templates out of freezer paper. I laid the fabric shapes onto my light box, placed the freezer paper on top of the selection of shapes then traced on top of the black stitched line. I added the name of the shape, drew the straight grain, and how many copies of each shape required for the doll. Then I cut out each freezer paper shape, on the drawn line. I will make card ones from these, and will then have two options available for use.

I found this little bargain in the week, A Luna Lapin book, with all the patterns for the outfits included. I bought it on spec thinking it could be a fantastic find re ideas of size for clothing my doll. It turns out that Luna and her friends are the same height as my doll. What a great off chance buy! I was quite prepared to measure, and make little patterns, but this will be a huge saving in time!

Until next time, “Happy Stitching”!

Di