Elodie the Elephant

I got the One Yard Wonders (OYW) book, I can say this book is giving me cool ideas on what to do with one yard fabric only.  And I bought this book mainly because I want to have the simple pattern on dresses they've shared there.  For my first project, I chose Elodie the Elephant, since I love this animal so much and I love to make doll...

The instruction on how to make Elodie the Elephant is a little bit confusing, thus I decided to search on Google about the tutorial.  Thanks for Sarah Faix of Bit of Whimsy dolls, the Elodie's designer, she shared the tutorial on youtube.com and divided the tutorials into three parts, click here for part 1, part 2, and part 3.  You bet you'll find it so easy to sew this Elodie ;)  

I was thinking to give the doll to my hubby's friend's daughter as a gift but rethinking when I found the stitching on the ears' sides were so tricky and I wasn't satisfied :(   So, just let me have this Elodie for myself at home :)  At least, if I have little guests they can play with it ;)

A Promise is A Promise ;)

I promised one time to a dear friend's daughters, that we'll make a doll together during their holiday...When they returned to Indonesia, they bought some meters of felt fabric to make the doll :)   So, holiday was almost finished when their mom took them to my home for the doll making project :)

I have a Wee Wonderful book by Hillary Lang, I showed it to them and asked them to choose which one they want to make.  These two girls are Megu, 11 and Pooja, 9 years-old.  Megu is on her transitional age, about leaving her childhood and going to enter her teenage age, so she's not that interested in making doll.  It seems to me that she's also not into crafting :) so she finally chose to make minnie mouse applique from the felt fabric with her mom's help :)  While, Pooja, she was so busy picking up the doll to make, she wanted them all but she knew she could only pick one :)  Finally she chose tag-a-long doll to be smurfed ;)

Look at them, they are so serious doing their tasks :)  And on the right side is Pooja holding her doll, she named it Emma :)  I wanted the girls to be involved during the project making.  They happily transferred the picture into a paper ready to be cut.  They also loved to help the stitching.  I taught them how to do the backstitch and they do the rest, though the result is running stitch :D  However, to save the time, I did the major stitching using my machine.  Well, as you know, kids will always hope a project can be done at the same day itself, so they can take their doll home :)

Isn't Emma as sweet as Pooja?  Pooja is so proud with her doll and keep on telling people that she made it by herself ;)

Embroidered Strawbery Shortcake

Yep, as I told you before I am in love with embroidery...This time I've done Strawberry Shortcake embroidery. The idea I got from this blog, I was searching for strawberry as the keyword and found that blog.  It's so interesting, she made an apron with that character.  But, since I've smurfed several aprons before, I was thinking to use the embroidery into something else.  A tote bag would be great, since I have two nieces there who will love to carry it around :)

I made two Strawberry Shortcake embroideries one is the old version of the character another one is the makeover version.  This time, I just want to share the makeover version, since I haven't finished sewing the bag of the old version one :)

I really love the experience during the embroidery process.  A fellow crafter suggested to use a binding with the same fabric as the back side of the bag (pink polka dots) to frame the embroidery, check her tutorial of how to do it nicely.  Using that method now the embroidery part can be used as a pocket.  Oh yeah, this time I quilted the bag ;) it's another achievement for me heheheh...

See you at my next smurfing project ;)