hesperoo: two new dolls

In the past month we lost our lovely dog Taos to cancer (I was too sad to blog about it at the time), we had a lovely log cabin + hot tub break in the New Forest, plus some bouts of illness thrown in, getting all Christmassy and... taa-daa! here is another doll I have slowly, but steadily been making. She is a gift for one of Hesper's friends. Made following the Tag Along Doll pattern from Wee Wonderfuls, which I used before here:

Because her recipient is part South-African, I used orange and purple South African fabrics for her dress and legs. She also has green felt eyes and curly wool, hair instead of felt as in the original pattern. I worked out how to do the hair by looking at various techniques online and then just sort of making it up a bit. I wanted her to have long curls and found this kinky- textured wool gave the right look. I stitched it into side bunches as I used a lot of wool and did not want it to look too wild.

With the left over pieces of fabric I made her a quilt, backed with some lilac and white print fabric that I had squirrelled away. I also covered a couple of buttons with the purple fabric and added these to the quilt with orange elastic loops, so that the quilt can be wrapped around her and buttoned up into a sort of sleeping bag-cocoon! For finishing touches, she has a hand-stamped linen gift tag with metal eyelet and a chocolate coin in her pocket!

...and here is doll number two for another of Hesper's friends. Again, using the same pattern I made her body from organic, fairtrade linen. The dress is from the lilac & white fabric that I used for the quilt backing above and her hot pink cord legs are made from a pair of Hesper's old trousers (thoroughly washed!) She also has curly wool hair, tied in bunches with strips of felt.