Each year, for Christmas, we give Ellie and Mark each a book and then one small toy of some kind.  For Mark, I sewed him a memory game and THOROUGHLY enjoyed the fussy cutting of all the objects.  All my color book  fabric came in handy for this one!

Row#1: puzzle piece, lemon, oranges, ducks,
Row #2: plum, cement mixer, van, strawberries,
Row 3#: turtle, frog, ants, owls

These are the four Mark chose to feature, along with the truck/car fabric on the back of each one.  The van is my favorite!

I made a matching lined drawstring bag for game piece storage.

We’ve had fun playing the game, but, because competitive games never go well in our household, we just play “let’s make a big pile of tiles as we ALL work together to find the matches!” Plus, Mark insists that he has to be the one to find the cement mixer!

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For Ellie, I made her three different articles of clothing for her doll.  The simplest of the three, I made a set of bloomers (as the pattern calls them) or panties (as Ellie calls them) to match the dress I made her in August. She’s been asking for these ever since I made the dress so it’s about time I made them for her!

Second, I made a gathered-bottom nightgown.  I happily used the remaining fabric that I had from making her pillowcase and corn sack last year. 🙂

ties from self-made bias tape

Finally, here is my favorite (and most frustrating) of the three projects: a jacket with vintage rickrack and bias tape.  I absolutely love the fabric I used for it but I will never sew with it again.  It’s woven really loosely so it shifted around like mad and raveled like crazy. It was [just] manageable in the doll size but would have been a nightmare at full size. All the same, isn’t it beautiful?

I added vintage baby rick rack to the lower edge, just above the hem, as well as to the collar and also two sweet little buttons left over from Ellie’s sailboat dress. I used Velcro as the actual fastener, knowing that the fabric could never hold a buttonhole (plus it’s easier for small hands).

I have loved using the vintage pattern that my mom found for me but in this case, found that the pattern neglected to include the facing pieces (although the directions called for using them).  So I had to come up with my own method for constructing and finishing the collar and front seams. I also had this vintage bias tape, which was a perfect match and it worked passably well for the collar (although I ended up sewing the collar down so that it wouldn’t stick straight up all the time).

Just a little proof for the craziness of the fabric:

I don’t remember who gave me the fabric and I didn’t even meet the person who gave me all the vintage rick rack and bias tape but it sure was fun to have it all in my stash to pull out and sew for my beauty-loving daughter! Thank you to you both, mysterious generous people! 🙂

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Sharp eyes might have noticed little feet and hands in all the doll clothes pictures.  That was Mark, being my photo shoot “assistant”. For fun, here’s the outtakes:

“I’m holding her hair!”

“I’m taking off her clothes REALLY fast!”