Curly Hair

I didn’t get to any sewing this week. To be completely honest, my husband had 2 surgeries in the past 3 weeks, and I was utterly exhausted afterwards. I didn’t realize how much I was carrying it. He’s fine. He’s better than ever, and so thankful he was able to have the surgeries. So all is good there.

I wasn’t sewing most of this time. I wasn’t doing a lot of anything other than watching videos. However, I did watch one video, and I found it very helpful for something I’ve wanted to cross off my to-do list.

It’s been five years now that I’ve had this sweet little preemie Cabbage Patch doll. She’s adorable, and I got her because I too was a preemie baby.The first thing I did after I got her was curl her hair. Then I made her a sweet little slip dress with some pantaloons underneath.

I’ve been very happy with her transformations, but there was one thing I still wanted to change. My eyes have some brown in them but overall they’re green. I wanted my preemie baby to have green eyes too.

This past week a video started playing after one I had watched. It was an artist re-doing the eyes and make up on a doll. He said he used watercolor pencil crayons. I stopped the video right away and went to my sewing room. Yes, I still had a tin of watercolor crayons with my fabric markers. I was going to redo my doll’s eyes.

I didn’t take off her eye color first, for a couple of reasons. I don’t know that I could re-draw the eyes well enough to satisfy me. And as I mentioned, I have some brown in my eyes as well. So I decided to ‘enhance’ the eyes, rather than re-do them completely. Here are the eyes in a side-by-side photo. Yes, they’re a little bit brighter and lighter. She’s just perfect to me now.

I’m off to play with my draft. Happy creating!

Many years ago, my Mum bought me a Cabbage Patch Preemie. I was her preemie baby, so she thought it was fitting. However, my poor girl was neglected in my closet. It was time for me to do something for her.

It was time to give her a make-over. The first thing she needed was to have something done with her hair.

preemie with straight hair

As adorable as she is… well, she’s in a family with all curly heads.

It’s amazingly easy to curl doll hair. A little foil (folded over the end of the hair); a straw (I didn’t have pipe cleaners); I used pin curl clips to hold everything in place; and boiling water. It only took four ‘curlers’ to curl her hair. You can read how to do it here.

curls Curls!

I didn’t take a photo of her with hair in ‘curlers’ – I wasn’t sure I’d love the results. I still may re-do her ‘do. I’ve since bought pipe cleaners.

I also had some fun making her an outfit, because, as you could see, she had nothing on.

So out came some of my cotton Lycra, and a pattern from Madame Alexander 14″ Girl Victorian Doll Patterns:

ma doll patterns Although this outfit is good, I think the next one I’ll try will be an actual Preemie outfit.

I ordered a Cabbage Patch Kids Preemie pattern book a while back now, and when I ordered it, a second book was included – CPK Designer Clothes. Some of the patterns had been cut out in that second book, so it was included for free. I thought that was really nice. Here’s the pattern book I ordered:

cabbage patch patterns