a belated gift for my birthday boy...

 

In thinking about gifts for this past Christmas, I got the crazy idea in my head that I needed to make handmade gifts for everyone.  There are days that I just need to make something, or want to make something!  But the reality sets in and I realize that the timing is just not right with the ages of the kids right now.  It is better than it was a year ago, and will be better in another year, but I just can't do everything that I want to right now.  

But I held on to this project.  I found this idea for fabric nesting dolls on the blog, Made By Joel.  I adjusted the sized so I could make our whole family and drew the patterns on cardstock.  The pattern for the largest puppet I made 10.5 inches tall and 6.75 inches wide, and then I stepped down 1 inch in height and 3/4 inches in width for each consecutive puppet so they would nest. 

I used natural colored denim for the fronts of the puppets, and different colored fleece for the backs (so nice and soft to play with!).  I hemmed the bottom edge of the denim so it had a nice finished look, but didn't need to with the fleece.

After I had all the pieces cut out, I drew the people onto the denim with a black sharpie.  Now I don't draw free-handed very well, so I copied the people from this paper city (also Made By Joel) and sized them accordingly and printed them out.  I then taped them to one of our sunroom windows and was able to see through the denim to draw.  I wanted our family to look like us, so I used the paper city figures for their shapes only, and then added my own clothing design touches. =)

After that it was only a matter of sewing the fronts and backs together and then getting them wrapped up for my birthday boy (he didn't mind receiving the present a little late!).  I think all the kids (and maybe even the momma and dadda) are having fun with these.  And that they nest is not only neat for storage, but part of the fun for playing!