DIY Couple Rag Dolls

WARNING: This isn't a thorough tutorial as I took bits and pieces from other tutorials and lack expertise

Last week I spent most of my time sewing these cuties for Firu. He's going back to Germany tomorrow and I wanted to give him a memento of myself so he won't forget me. Silly, I know, because he's my boyfriend but that's just who I am. Sewing a doll was something that popped into my head long before I went home but I only looked for the tutorials after I decided to buy the materials. Also, I got pretty lucky for the most part because people were providing me with extra materials left and right. Thank you to everyone who contributed. Since I'm modifying a lot, there are certain materials in the original tutorials that I didn't use and vice versa. I'll try to make this as clear as possible, so here we go.

For the base doll as well as the clothes for the girl, I was saved by Katie's tutorial on A Beautiful Mess. You can start by downloading all her patterns - trust me, if you're a newbie, this will help immensely! - and cut the muslin out. Since I was also sewing a boy doll, I didn't make the faces the same to hers. Mine's pretty simple actually; just sew on two buttons as eyes and a red/maroon thread as lips then glue on a smiley-felt for the girl's lips. The button eyes can look pretty creepy but it reminds me of Coraline so I'm perfectly content. For the clothes, I still followed Katie's instructions in regards of the dress but made a patternless shirt for the guy. Big mistake! I don't recommend you do this. Here's what you should do:

• Retrace the pattern you used for the dress top on the fabric using a pencil
• Before cutting, make sure you measure it by putting the doll on top of the fabric and lengthen the top if it seems to be a bit on the short side. Remember, long is always better!
• Follow the instructions regarding the sewing of the top
• You're done!

As for the pants, here's what I did:

• Put your doll on top of the pants fabric and trace the hips as well as the legs area, making sure you leave ± 1 cm between the lines and the doll
• Cut two pieces of the traced form and hem the ankles and hip parts
• With the pants still inside out, sew the two pieces together
• Cut a line at the front leading to the crotch but not all the way through and hem one side
• Turn them right side out and put them on the doll
• Put the hemmed side over the other side and sew a button on top of them

I actually put them on first before hemming the ankles and hip area but I find it quite difficult to do - although doing it the other way around might find to be hard too. Please take your pick and choose wisely. 

Oh but we're not done yet! After all that is done, you'll definitely have two bald dolls with jazzy outfits. You've got to put the hair on them though, right? If you don't want to, you can just skip this step. But if you do, I used this tutorial from YouTube. I find it quite easy to do although I think getting thicker yarn would've helped. As I tried to explain in these pictures:

• You cut a strip from your leftover muslin and lay it out
• Take a thread of the yarn and start lining it left to right. One side will be the fringe/bangs and the other will be the rest of the hair so make sure you get the length right. They don't have to be the same length but be careful not to get them tangled. 
• After you're done, sew the yarn onto the muslin strip. This is tricky so make sure you get all the yarn in place. 
• Then just repeat until you get the thickness that you wish. Mine was 3 layers thick.
• Now hand stitch the fabric with the hair in place onto the top of the doll's head
• After it's all set, cut out the extra muslin
• If you wish for your dolls to have a certain hairstyle, you can just give your dolls haircuts afterwards

So that's how I did it. As you probably would have guessed, I'm not an expert in this by any definition of the word. Thought it would be nice for another newbie to hear from a fellow amateur. Those experts can always make something hard look easy. I know, in learning something new, sometimes we're too afraid to stray from the forged path but don't be scared to try something more compatible to you. Also, I thought you might like to see what I did to the back of the dress so you can see it on the photo above. And I'm not ashamed to show you the botched shirt of the guy doll.

Guest Post: Alexandra of Into the Woods

Hi there! I'm Alexandra, vintage personal style and DIY blogger from Into the Woods. I am super excited to be guest posting today here on Alive as Always! This is a super easy DIY 1950s Style Headband project, that will only take minutes!

Supplies:

• headband
• hot glue gun
• 6x6 fabric square

1. Gather one end of the fabric, and glue onto the very end of the headband. 
2. Stretch other side of fabric up to the highest point it will reach. Gather and glue down. 
3. All done, it's that simple!

I hope you all enjoyed this little tutorial! It's a fun project, and you can make it in several colors to add a little pizzazz to any outfit! A special thanks to Bivi for allowing me to post for you today! 

xoxo,

Alex

To Infinity and Beyond

Last summer, I had a plan to knit some scarves for myself and Firu. I started as summer was nearing its end and procrastinated quite a lot to get the scarves done. In actuality, a ball of yarn took me only 1-2 days to finish - without procrastination, of course. But last week, they were finally finished. Just in time for the cold weather, I suppose. Please do head on to Park & Cube for the tutorial. It was very helpful for me. Granted, I already learnt how to knit last year - though failed miserably upon knitting a scarf for Firu - but Shini did provide links to learn how to knit a scarf from scratch for beginners. So her tutorial should be quite helpful even if you haven't tried your hand on knitting before. She only provides her readers with the basics so you have plenty of room for modification - which is what I did.

This is my scarf. It has to be in the colour of autumn, obviously. I used one type of wool only, Rigato wool - I don't know if that's the brand or if it's the type -, which consists of 53% virgin wool and 47% acrylic fibre. Just so you know, I'm just throwing this out there. I have no idea what kind of effect they have to the scarf. For this scarf, I used up 270m of wool - which took 3 balls of yarn. Since I have no idea about any of the stitches, I just decided to try three different patterns. One is when I vary between knit and purl every three lines, two is when I vary every two lines and the third one is when I vary every line. This scarf is significantly thinner than Firu's but it's perfect for autumn. I bound the ends together by stitching it together with a tapestry needle, which is the traditional way of finishing it off.

Photos of me by Galuh

I must say, there's this amazing rush of accomplishment when I can finally wear a scarf I made myself. Sure, you can always walk into a clothing store, pick a scarf which you like best and purchase it. But it's definitely less satisfying - and to your liking - than if you knit a scarf yourself. You can always turn it into whatever you want, use a colour that you love best - and rarely find in stores - and in whichever style you love best. Let me tell you, it's seriously awesome sauce! And, yes, this is me encouraging you guys to try something new, like knitting - if you haven't already.

DIY Patterned Shoes (Firu's Birthday Special!)

This year I made Firu DIY shoes for his birthday. I have this habit of giving handmade or deeply thoughtful gifts for the people that I love. Double that for my family, best friends and, of course, Firu. The shoes I used to DIY came from Asos, though there's no reason why you can't use cheaper shoes. Although I think the quality of the canvas won't be as good - but it shouldn't be quite apparent. These ones are pretty good, seeing in how fast they absorb water when I used water colour. Cheap knock offs might be less absorbant and can have a negative effect on the whole process. I know it's probably rather lame to gift him DIY shoes since it's pretty easy to do and pretty much everyone can make it too. But it's the thought that counts, right? Plus, what better time is there to DIY shoes if not summer?

You'll need: 

canvas shoes
fabric paint
fabric markers (I used 2 shades of a colour)
brushes (various sizes help)
water colour

This is how I did it: I went nuts with the markers, drawing all these spontaneous patterns - sorry, bad instructions, I know. But I did. Then I let the markers dry for a day before painting the linings of the hole. The fabric paint I used instructed me to wait at least 3 days for it to dry then I washed the shoes (using the machine, though it's not recommended). And finally, I dab some water colour on some parts of the shoes, creating soft hues all around. That's it. Visually, it goes like this:

I've got some confessions to make. First, the water colour thing was an accident. I did want to actually paint the whole thing with water colour but it went down the drain real quick. It was supposed to look like this pair from Valerie Chua but, it didn't. I tried to scrub it off but it didn't work so I decided to just make some hue-ish effect. Second, I first used a fabric marker for the darker colour and a paper marker for the lighter colour. Stupid mistake, really. After I put it into the machine, the lighter colour was washed right off and I had to start filling the gaps all over again. Since it was all hand-drawn, it was pretty obvious that I couldn't make the same pattern twice - I'm not a printer. If you look closely, you'll notice the differences between the right and the left shoe. So there you go. Hope you guys find it helpful and have fun DIY-ing!