A Craft that Sort of Worked

+JMJ+

I woke up this morning to snow.
I felt the life force draining from me.
I needed Something To Do.

Immediately, my mind leaped to the bundles of felt I have left over in my room from the Vestment Project  and then I remembered these ADORABLE dolls from My Little Felt Friends.

The crazy was already bubbling up inside me, so my mind did a few contortions and came up with an absurd idea: 

"I could make those!!!!!"

I'll just go ahead and let you know: I can't. To start off with, I didn't have the right colors. All I had were the liturgical colors, along with some yellow I had stashed away from a different project. I convinced the girls that we should make angel dolls with pink (... rose?) dresses and they were very excited.  One problem solved. The second problem is that my sewing skills aren't really...great. I'm adequate, but I only know a few stitches and I haven't the knotting techniques nor the patience to pull off something as lovely as that Therese doll above. But I was desperate and the kids were excited about pink.

I let the girls decorate the dresses with fabric pens, which kept them entertained for about five minutes. Fortunately, they managed to get the paint all over the vinyl tablecloth, their arms and their faces-- which was much easier to clean up than if they had drawn on their clothes!

The trickiest part about the whole affair, though, was that assembling the dolls took a lot more effort than I thought. There were times when I was dangling three different needles, all with different thread colors, trying to sew the pieces in the correct order.  It was a little bit of a pain and I'm sure someone with better skillz could have managed easier, but it wasn't all that bad.  All in all, I spent three hours sewing the dolls this morning and here they are!

Notice how the seams are all bulgy and the angel on the left has her head on totally crooked. But I finished the craft and when all was said and done, this happened: 

 

The girls really seem to enjoy them. They are so proud that they made the dresses, and I'm happy they'll have some dolls they can take to church.

Now off to tackle the rest of the day!

Addendum: The girls have decided that what these angels reallllly need is some glitter glue. I couldn't agree more.