dolly sue

I've started a big project this weekend that's keeping me busy.  I've been commissioned to make ten little dollies for a friend who will keep them on hand for baby gifts.  Avery was pretty sure that one of them must be for her, so I brought out her own little dolly in hopes of satisfying her, but she still figured a new one was coming her way.  I've since cut out and added an eleventh dolly to the line so she'll have a little surprise at the end of it all.

Avery liked the idea of putting together the dollies, matching hair with face and body, so I made her some paper pieces to keep her fingers out of my assembly line.  Her new paper dolly was cut out and named "Sue", which is likely after Avery's middle name, which she thinks is Sue.  (It's not.)

Here's the unfinished line-up!  Now I'm onto hand sewing eyes and cheeks and smiles.  Feels like I'm getting back in the groove of making things.  My mind (and various scraps of paper) are filling up with a list of "to-do" ideas.  Some would be perfect for Easter, which is coming up super soon, but a little pressure always does wonders with me!

Something else from my sewing stash is keeping us busy these days.  I saw this really simple idea on a blog recently and wondered why I hadn't thought of it already.  Avery's been loving my jar of colourful buttons.  The colour sorting only goes well when I stick around and keep prodding, but it is helping her begin to recognize the names of colours and which ones are the same.  On her own, the buttons become the filling for pies, lots and lots of pies.  While I'm feeling confident that we're out of the 'eat and swallow' stage, we did have a wake up call to remove the really small ones after Levi had to rescue a little blue button from Avery's nose.  It was way up there!