Art Dolls by Papillon Bleu UK

If you like interesting and unique dolls, you'll appreciate this!

I found this blog today.  It's really cool.  She makes these beautiful art dolls.  Check it out.
http://papillonbleuuk.blogspot.com/

Large Amigurumi Doll Tutorial

I found this free amigurumi doll pattern a while back and thought I'd share it.  It's a rather large doll.  I would say if you have one special little girl, this would be a great gift to make for her.  Not ideal for my situation at the moment.  It is Christmas time and I have about a dozen kids I need to make presents for.  Maybe for my one and only daughter, I could set aside the time for this dolly.  Of course, it's hard to hide the creation of something this big, but then again, she started kindergarten this year.  :)  Maybe it's possible after all.

http://stitch.hellooperator.net/free-patterns/amigurumi-doll/

Check out the tutorial.  Also, if you are going to make this for a child under three, sew on felt for eyes instead of buttons.  Happy crafting!

It's been a while

I had a baby recently and haven't had much time to blog. Forgive me. I'm trying to get back. It is holiday season, as well. You know what that means... Presents! I don't have a lot of time, but I have even less money so this year will be a challenge. I will not be deterred, though.

Last year, I made all the kids a little doll. This year, I think I would like to continue the tradition. There are many kids in our family, and I can whip up an amigurumi friend in a few hours with the right planning. You can too. It's really quite easy.

Basic doll- one head, a sphere shape. one body, a cylinder shape. two arms and two legs, four thin cylinder shapes. make sure you leave a tail on all to sew. Last is just details. eyes, ears, mouth, nose, shoes, clothes. Easy accessories include- hats, purses, capes, masks, backpacks, etc.

Have fun! I'll post some pics of my crocheted friends soon. Until then, happy crocheting!

New Dolly

I crocheted a new doll for my daughter these past few days. I never really new how to make doll hair, so I was a bit disappointed with all my past attempts at making a crocheted doll. I looked up so more tutorials on how to make a crocheted/amigurumi doll. I found a few different techniques that people use to make doll hair. So, I thought I would try it out. This is a fairly simple pattern that I created.

It is an amigurumi doll. Her head is made until you get to 30 single crochets. I then did five rows of the 30 single crochets. Then I just decreased until I had a row of 12 single crochets. The body is created until you get to 24 single crochets. Then I alternated decreasing and just doing another row of single crochets. This made the cone like shape. Then for the arms, I used an adjustable ring of three instead of six and single crocheted twice in each to get six crochets in a ring. I then just made five more rows of six single crochets. For the legs I started with a color for her shoes, I then made an adjustable ring and crocheted six into it. I continued with a row of 12 and then another of 12, then I slipstitched into the next chain, and I changed to the flesh color. I did one more row of 12 then I decreased one whole row, and continued with chains of 6 until I felt the leg was long enough, about three more rows. I also made a hat for the doll, this is crocheted until you get to 36 single crochets in a spiral. Remeber it is all just a multiplication of 6.

For the hair I took long pieces of a boucle yarn and tied four of them together until I had enough pieces. I pulled the pieces of yarn through the head. Some of the pieces toward the front of the face have more than one piece of yarn pulled through. I gave the doll two braids and even some bangs. I sewed two button eyes on to her. My daughter is almost three years old, so I thought I would try it. I also took some pink yarn and made her a mouth. Oh and the hat has a piece of yarn that is tied around it, so that it stays on her head, but can be taken off. I also tied little bows on her shoes to cover wear I changed the yarn. Just a tip, when you make amigurumi, make sure you leave a long piece of yarn when you are done making one of the pieces because that's what you used to sew the pieces together. That's about it, I stuffed the pieces, and sewed them together and out of came a pretty cute little doll. I think she kind of looks like a biker with the hat right now. I might still add some more things, but for the most part I think she is mostly done. Hope you like her.

It's nice!

Lately, it's been kind of nice out, so on my husband's days off we've been able to go out more. The one problem with that is, our car doesn't have very good air conditioning. We have to aim for bumps to get it to kick on. Yeah, I would love to retire that car. It's his baby though, and we need to wait probably another year before we can actually afford a good alternative. That's fine with me. I can wait, I know that eventually we'll have something better suited to our family. As it is now, only the four of us can ride in the car. It is only a two door, and don't even ask about trunk space for a stroller. We have an umbrella stroller that we bought like two years ago for fifteen dollars that still gets used very often.

On another note, that ballerina pattern I bought is not my first attempt at amigurumi. For those of you who do not know what amigurumi is let me attempt to explain. Amigurumi is a type of Japanese crochet that is done in spirals instead of in rounds. It's really pretty easy with a few differences from the western version of crochet. One difference is you use an adjustable ring to start. You also use an embroidery needle to sew the extremities onto the body.

A while back I made a few different amigurumi dolls and animals. I gave most of them away without taking pictures of them. I took a picture of one of them that I made and gave to my daughter. Some of the other things I made included a little bear and a white bunny. Here is a doll I made for my daughter using the amigurumi technique. There is one thing that is not always used in amigurumi and that is the addition of felt, I like the look of it. You can use just regular old yarn or thread to make the eyes and other details though. I tend to not use buttons and other things that can fall off, simply because it's not recommended for children under three.

I think I used too large a crochet hook in the past. I am pretty confident that the ballerina will come out well, I just need to get the right yarn and actually get everything together so I can get to work.