Bettie Doll

Originally rag dolls were made and stuffed with scraps of materials. Today version of rag dolls is more colourful, cheerful and lightweight.

Meet Miss Bettie, one of my experimental dolls. This doll measures approximately 11" tall from head to toe.I just roughly sketched the doll pattern. For the face, I used canvas so I can easily paint them with fabric paint

I made the body out of some cotton fabric scraps. Sew the parts all together and stuff it with poly fill.

The tricky part would be painting the face. Would you like your doll to look happy or grumpy? Whatever the facial expression that you choose to draw will create the character of your doll. To avoid mistakes, I draw the eyes and mouth lightly with pencil before painting it. The hair is hand painted so I can make whatever hair style that I like.

This is one happy doll...happy Bettie :)

If you want to make your own rag doll, here's a free doll pattern from make-baby-stuff.com 

Free Doll Pattern

 Thanks for stopping by and have a happy weekend.

 

Box Pencil Case Pattern

This is actually a small pouch pattern that I resized big enough to hold my pencils. I used an old pants of mine to make this pencil case.
The pattern is from a Japanese sewing book, ‘Lady Boutique’ where all the instructions are in Japanese. For an amateur sewer who doesn’t understand a word of Japanese like I do, this pattern is easy to follow. Thanks to the excellent step by step drawings given, you can sew this pencil case in a whip.

If you want to make the small pouch, you can follow the step by step drawing patterns straight away. Do add 1 cm seam allowances to the pattern. All the measurements are in cm.

The box pencil case that I made is 8” long & 3.5” high. If you would like to make one, you will need:
• One piece of exterior fabric measuring 9” by 8” (including ½ “ seam allowances)
• One piece of interior fabric measuring 9” by 7”
• One 8” zipper

Step by step box pencil case/ small pouch pattern

1. Cut the fabric according to the given measurement.
2. Layer the two fabric pieces. Exterior fabric right side down and interior fabric right side up. The interior fabric is 1” shorter, so lay it in the middle of the exterior fabric.

3. Fold the edges of exterior fabric under 1/2” and press.
4. Place the zipper under the folded edges and sew together. (refer the diagram)
5. Turn the fabric interior side out and fold the corners as shown in the diagram.


6. Sew along the corner of both sides.
7. Cover the corners with bias tape & sew to finish.


Yippee..! Now you have a brand new pencil case.

When chicken clucks

Chicken clucks loudly to announce the laying of an egg. Today I’m clucking like a mad chicken announcing the birth of my craft blog. Welcome to Needle Field!
I’ll be ‘hatching’ some sewing & crafting work of mine to share with you crafters out there. Do have a look around. Any feedback & comments are welcomed.

Do you fancy my chicken?
I made the papier mache ‘conical chicken’ in 2005 based on a tutorial by Pat Little in the Papier Mache Resource website. Her tutorial is very easy to follow even for a beginner. Link to tutorial.

In the spirit of recycling, I just used whatever material that I’ve got at that time. My chicken is coated with leftover wall primer, painted with water colour & sealed with clear lacquer spray. This chicken makes a cool paper weight and is light enough to be perched on twigs. However it is not suitable for outdoor display.

Thanks for stopping by.