Making a rag doll with a child

How to avoid the little children voice "Mooom, I want a doll with a dress and a pair of pants and a shirt and a bag and her friend, hum friendS, with..." (I let you guess the endless list ;-)

The simple way to avoid this, when the little girl can't understand that I have no time to make all of this, and certainly not in a few minutes, was, I thought, to make a doll and its dress, with the child, to show her how long it can take to complete.

I was wrong of course: my little girl forgot all the work we did and the time we spent, to ask for another doll and all its wardrobe the minute we finished the first one... Poor mother of a little girl.

So, last Spring, I sewed a rag doll and its dress with my little girl. This is our first step.

We chose a simple rag doll from theses two inspiring japanese books (photo above: it's impossible, in this house, to take a photo without at least one little hand on the way).

I tried to explain all the process to the child:

• Tracing and cutting the doll pattern pieces from the book.
• Tracing and cutting the fabric pieces.
• Assembling all the parts in a given order.
• Finishing the dolls: embroider the eyes and the mouth, stuff the doll and make the doll's hair.
• Repeating the whole process for each doll garment we planned to do.

After four sewing sessions, we ended up with this rag doll (first photo of this post).

Next step next time!