Busy few weeks

So the last few weeks have been busy busy busy. I've still been sewing, but the blogging has taken a back seat. 

A week and a half weeks ago was my college's homecoming. Since M and I are both Alumni of the same school, and we are both members of Greek organizations we decided to take the long 3 hour drive to campus.  It would have been 3 1/2 hours, but the speed limit of our interstate was recently raised from 65 to 75 mph, yay!

Photo taken from the passenger seat

This past weekend a close friend of mine E and her adorable 15 month old daughter G made the 4 1/2 hour trek to come visit me. I know that long of a drive isn't easy with a toddler in tow, so I felt really special and had a very very fun weekend.

Little G wearing M's beloved Charlotte Hornet's hat

 Since E is from my hometown, my mother sent up a few Halloween decorations for the house....

and a costume for Zoe the dog

What a little angel

I live in a rural area on the US/Canadian border, so there are lots of pretty places to explore. We walked some nice trails and enjoyed the crisp fall air

The mountains in the background are on Canadian soil

I was sad to see them go, but glad to get back to my blogging. Before they left I just had to snap a picture of Zoe wearing G's coat. The things we put the puppy through... she's a good dog though, incredibly patient and well mannered.

This blog is supposed to be about my craft room though, right? If you look above Zoe in the last picture you can see a pink and orange Modular Star. I made this for little G using a tutorial from Kid Giddy. I love her blog! It is filled with the most precious projects. That is the only picture I managed to get of it if only by accident. I really need to get better about recording my crafts; I usually just have the "get it done" mindset and forget to take pictures later.

Multitasking

Is apparently not my strong suit...

To be almost finished the block and then burn it? Ugh.

I guess that's what I get for trying to work my computer and iron at the same time.

Trying something new...

 

Can you guess what it is?

 

Hmmm, it sort of looks like a chicken wing...

And a dress form...?

Oh wait.... here we go.

 

I bought the book "Introduction to Making Cloth Dolls" by Jan Horrox and it is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. The detailed directions and pictures helped me every step of the way and I am pretty proud of my first cloth doll. I did make a couple of changes to the design in the book, Jan creates dolls that are built with their "clothes" as part of the doll. I wanted to be able to dress the doll up and practice clothing construction, so I made just a "plain" doll. Since the book does not include patterns for clothing, looks like I will be attempting to draft my own patterns which I'm sure will be quite a trial and error process but I'm excted.

Do any of you have experience with sewing dolls or doll clothes?