I’ve had my daughter come up with doll ideas in the past that have been fairly complicated, and required a great deal of my attention.  But a few days ago, in an attempt to keep her occupied in something creative (rather than vegging out on her Ipad), I suggested she DRAW her own simple pillow-dolls.

“I can DO that?!?” She questioned.  Of course!  And the best part is, it takes minimal mom-effort.   🙂

I started with a bolt of inexpensive off-white muslin fabric I had.  I have no recollection of how I obtained this fabric (I think my mom once sent it to me), but it’s been around a long, long, time, and I use it for EVERYTHING.

I grabbed our bag of permanent markers, and told her she could draw away, keeping in mind that it had to have a seam around it, preferably simpler than the drawing, to make sewing easier and more sturdy.

Once she did that, I took her to the sewing machine, where I had her help guide the fabric (she’s still learning to use it herself), and with the fabric doubled over, we just stitched all around the outline, leaving a gap on the leg to stuff it.

I figured this would be much easier than dealing with flipping a doll inside out, as you do with more detailed works, and this was VERY exciting to her.  We cut out the doll around the stitching (see the gap in her leg?  That’s where we stuff), stuffed her, and then completed the stitching with the machine.

She was SO excited!  You’d think we’d never made dolls before.  “Why didn’t you ever TELL me we could do this??”  she asked excitedly.  I reminded her that I had tried to get her to do this MANY TIMES over the years, but she always had WAY more complicated things in mind.  Anyway, apparently times had changed, and she was enthralled, immediately sitting down to draw more.

And they were lovely!  She said she wanted to call them “SweetKitties,” and asked if she could put them up for sale in my Etsy shop for $5 each.  I had intended to offer them here, but surprisingly, they sold out within an hour of posting them!

I am so grateful to have so many sweet and generous people that read our blog pages and social media supporting our art, and I’m grateful for each and every one of you reading these words right now.  Her excitement that someone actually bought her SweetKitty dolls was thrilling.  She helped me package them up, even making little “adoption cards” for each of them (like I do with my Dream Creepers).

Someone suggested she should put catnip in them so their cats could carry them around, but she worried that a cat would tear them up.  She says she’ll make more (because people so kindly asked if she would), but as kids don’t always have the attention span for dedicated business, we’ll see how it goes!

In any case, it was heartwarming to see so many people be so encouraging and supportive towards and 8-year old kid.  I had initially made this post to share the simplicity of making fun & easy dolls with kids, but it really truly was endearing.

In any case, if you don’t sew, you could always do what our stuffed animal-loving kid did before this most recent project: make the front and backs out of regular ol’ paper, stuff them with wadded up scrap paper (or toilet paper) and tape all around the edges.  BOOM–instant doll!

So make something fun, and easy, and get those kids CREATING!