Fleur - a vintage-style cloth doll

In a complete departure from my usual sewing projects, I got to pattern-test Big Little's newest creation, Fleur, a vintage-style cloth doll. She is simply too beautiful for words. I don't think the photos do her justice to be honest. She is so robust yet lovely to hold and at around 38cm tall, she is an amazing size. My 5 and 7 year old daughters just love her to pieces.

If you are visiting here from Big Little's blog tour this week, you may notice that my version is a little different to the lovely ones that have been showcased so far. It was not because I disliked the original pattern, but simply because she was created based on what materials I already had in my stash.

I've sewed one other doll before, but I just made it up as I went along and it was very rudimentary. This doll has quite a number of components to her, including jointed limbs, and the pattern has a very comprehensive tutorial to accompany it; to see it all in one file may actually a little overwhelming for a beginner or inexperienced sewer. The testers were dripfed the tutorial, which I think was a really good approach so it felt more manageable.

I think to do it in stages and only when you have complete focus on the task at hand is key. I had a little bit on my plate last month when I worked on this doll and so I snuck a few hours here and there and always with the nagging in my head that I really ought to have been doing something else, so I think I rushed her a bit and lost enjoyment because she didn't come together as well I had hoped she would. I really struggled with a number of areas, and my frustration only grew when I could not achieve a nice, balanced look to her face. I don't even know why - all the other pattern testers seemed to manage it without a problem. Perhaps it was because I used polyester fill where others had used natural fibres? I just could not achieve the lovely rounded look in the example pictures when I started stuffing her and it caused so much frustration! She had no other features at that point, she was just a bald-headed, faceless creature with no arms or legs and I just wasn't feeling it.

I also found stitching and turning out the ears and making clothes that are this small an issue - I must have man-sized hands or something but finesse is required to work with these little details and plenty of patience is needed because you cannot rush through the stages unless you want it to show in your craftsmanship.

I had a ball of sea foam green wool in my stash and this is what guided me in the colour choices for the doll clothes. I followed Lisa's tutorial to braid the hair, which was surprisingly easy, and then I decided  my doll needed a more relaxed hairstyle, so I rolled the hair at the side, swept it around to the other side and then braided it.

Having struggled to stuff the doll, I made the decision to tackle the clothes instead. I figured it would be a good idea to have a break from the doll and play with some pretty fabrics instead to rekindle the enjoyment. For me, there is no point sewing if I'm not having fun doing it. I made a kimono dress and regretted my fabric choices so I opted for separates instead. I love how it all turned out, with her little leggings made from a pair of one of my daughter's old holey leggings. They are simply longer French knickers without the elastic in the legs and sewn with a tapered leg so they fit more snugly. The denim jacket is adapted from the bodice pattern and made using a pair of old jeans and I snuck in some of Sarah Jane's florals for the lining. The teeshirt is made from a stretch knit and I handstamped it with one of the girls' stamps for a street wear look.

So fash-un.

The shoes are made from a small piece of suede and were really quite fun to make. I cut out the soles from the supplied shoe pattern and to make the boots, I drafted a slightly wider pattern using the contour of the doll's leg as a guide.

I was especially hesitant to embroider her eyes; having come so far through the doll-making process and lacking confidence in my embroidery skills, I feared I would completely ruin the doll and not be able to disguise any mistakes. Lisa came to the rescue with a simplified eye design, which is just perfect on this doll.

There were so many emotions at play constructing her. I oscillated between excitement, to frustration to ambivalence and finally to falling completely in love with my creation. It was a total incarnation of the creative process diagram I wrote about last month. I could never give this girl up, so I am so glad that my children play with her and adore her too. As soon as her face was stitched on, it was my eureka moment and I just fell in love with her.

If you are ever given a doll that someone has carefully laboured over for hours, feel special because these dolls are definitely not a five minute project and if someone has carefully crafted something as detailed and beautiful as a Big Little Fleur doll for you, know that you are loved.

Lisa was incredibly patient with me as I worked through the various stages asking a barrage of questions along the way. She has also generously offered 15% off the pattern until this Saturday 20 December only which is now listed here in her Etsy store. Just enter the code FLEUR15 at checkout.

Unless you put all the dolls being showcased this week side by side, you mightn't realize that they were created from the same pattern, which is the beauty of it - it is such a versatile pattern and you are only limited by your imagination. I am having all manner of difficulty adding links and uploading photos to my blog at the moment, so if you would like to see more versions of this doll and to visit the remaining blogs in the hop, please do click through to Lisa's blog for a list of all the participants.

Aimee from Small Steps Big Noises has made a doll to give away to one lucky little person. Knowing how much work goes into creating these dolls, this is such a generous thing to do and captures nicely the spirit of this time of year. Please do go and enter for your chance to own your very own Fleur doll.

Dr Seuss novelty prints winner

You do realize that the odds of winning something in the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day are pretty slim, don't you? Just think, of the 245 prizes up for grabs for international participants, there were hundreds more people in the group that missed out. But still, you gave it a shot and I admire that. If it's any consolation, you're in some fine company. Natalie Portman didn't win anything either.

Better luck next time, Nat.

My last giveaway winner was from the United States. This time, the fabrics will be winging their way across to western Australia. Congratulations, Janeta!  Thank you so much to you all for taking the time to enter my giveaway. A big hello to my new readers and likers on Facebook and Instagram, it is a good feeling to know people think I am worth a follow. I've also found one or two new (to me) blogs which is a nice bonus (that's just something us losers like to say).

Only six months until the next Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day, maybe some of us will be lucky next time round.

{Giveaway} Obseussed with Dr Seuss

**GIVEAWAY CLOSED**

Oh the places you'll go!
There is fun to be done!
There are blogs to visit and fabric to be won.
And the magical things you can do with this haul will make you the winning-est winner of all.

Go on, just leave me a comment telling me what you would do with this set of five Dr Seuss cotton fabrics. That's it. These are "Dr Seuss fat quarters", meaning they are slightly wonkily cut, but they are more or less 44x55cm/18x22" - and you may end up winning them all for free so who's going to complain about that?

**BONUS**

Existing followers of my blog will qualify for two chances to win. New followers are always welcome, but this is not a requirement to enter the giveaway. If you are a follower (and I have come to know many of you quite well through our behind-the-scenes chats), please just leave a second comment telling me how you follow - (i.e. Instagram, Facebook and/or via Bloglovin or Google Friend Connect. As you can see from my GFC tally, this is an extraordinarily popular blog so why would you want to miss out on all the action?

A winner at the close of the Giveaway Day will be drawn randomly and announced on my blog. In the unlikely event of being unable to reach the winner after three days, I will redraw.

Open to international entries.

Giveaway closes at 2pm Saturday 13 December (NZDST)/5pm Friday 12 December (PST).

**OTHER IMPORTANT STUFF**
if you comment anonymously, I will be unable to contact you and your entry will be invalid so please leave an email address in your message. I reply to everyone who gets in touch with me, provided there is an email address link in their profile, but Giveaway Day can get a little crazy, so please take this as my personal acknowledgement to all you fabric hounds for stopping by.

Giveaway Day runs for the whole week so there is plenty of time for you to head to the other participating blogs and enter their giveaways. To view them all, go here. Have fun!

Dairy | Egg | Nut-free recipe: Banana muffins

Here's a handy recipe to have to use up all those bananas. This can easily be made soy and gluten-free too without any trouble and they also taste great. Another variation I have made with success is adding chopped up chunks of Whittaker's dark chocolate to the mixture after the vanilla essence and milk has been added.

2 mashed bananas

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup oil

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1/3-1/2 cup milk alternative

Line muffin tin with oiled paper liners or spray oil on non-stick muffin tins.

Combine mashed banana, sugar and oil together. Mix well.

Sift baking powder, cinnamon, flour and baking soda together.

Add dry ingredients to banana mixture alternately with combined vanilla essence and milk. Mix well.

Pour into muffin cases. Bake at 180°C for 20-25 mins (15 minutes is sufficient with the muffin tray size I use, so when making these for the first time, test your muffins with a skewer at this point).

Makes 12.

I dust my cupcakes with icing sugar once cooled but they are just as tasty plain, or you could add your own icing if preferred.

Recipe adapted from The NZ Food Allergy Cookbook and printed with permission from Allergy New Zealand. The cookbook retails for $40 and is available to purchase here.

This is why we never go to restaurants

Blurry photo to match the haze of parenting these three.

For her birthday, Sienna asked to go out for dinner to a restaurant. This type of request is not ever undertaken lightly. We very rarely do this as we know that children + any eating establishment that requires reservations and that uses glassware and has carpet on the floor = exponentially high stress levels for the parents. This place even has tablecloths and no play area so you know it's classy. For a few days leading up to the event and even as we were getting out of the car on the night, we reminded the girls of how we expected them to behave otherwise someone was going to get it. We arrive at the restaurant with the plan to finish dining before we can disturb all the childless couples arriving to enjoy a quiet/romantic/insert-any-adjective-that-is-the-polar-opposite-to-dining-out-with-children dinner and, ideally, before anyone recognizes us. We sit down to our table but only after the children have run around it and under it several times and tested out all the chairs to see which one they want to sit on. The seating arrangements last just for a few minutes until they decide that actually, that other chair furtherest away from them does look more comfortable. I'm feeling pretty good having made it to this settling in phase using only my mildest hushed threatening voice.

Once they are all sitting nicely and can leave the cutlery and empty wine glasses alone, we offer the girls something to drink. From glasses. With bendy straws. I told you this place was classy. To their credit, they do remember to speak nicely to the waiter taking their orders, and only need reminding a few times to say please and thank you. We tell them several times to make that solitary drink last because it is the only one they are getting, but there must have been some deaf tonic thrown into the fizzy drink because they are emptied within minutes, so with nothing more to occupy them, I sit back and wait for the slippery slope of boredom to come beckoning while we wait for the other dinner guests in our party to arrive.

I love it when I can sit back and observe my children causing mayhem in the restaurant. It's delightful. I really feel like I have done my job as a parent. Because if children cannot behave decorously in public, then that surely is a reflection on how they have been parented, and usually the finger of poor etiquette points directly at the mother. You know it's true. We all know that Dads are just put on earth to teach them all the bad manners and that brushing your teeth only needs to happen the day before you have a dentist appointment. It's the yin and yang of parenting. So, when one of the girls lets out a burp at the table, my husband laughs, stopping short of giving her a hearty "That's my girl' pat on the back, but only because he sees my death stare. So, yes, these little cherubs sitting in the middle of a restaurant with straws shoved up their noses clearly learnt that trick from him, but I will be the only one at that table being silently judged by onlookers. With drinks downed, and straws banished, I wait for my favourite melody "When can we eeeeeaaat? and its harmony "I'm hunnnggrry" to start on repeat.

At this time of the year, this restaurant is offering Christmas-style buffet dinners, complete with sparkly Christmas crackers. After they have eaten their fill from the all-you-can eat buffet, the children are finally allowed to open them to play quietly with the treats that lie within - ha! The stuff of fairytales. Of course, someone wins a toy that the others all want so then there is a mad rush to ransack the remaining nine crackers at the table to see if there is an identical toy. There isn't. Never mind that we are on a rare outing on a school night with their younger cousins and they have just filled their tummies with some delicious food and a single flavoursome beverage, the measure of the success of the evening rests on whether we are going to leave with three tiny plastic soccer ball yo-yos.

So, once the bill has been settled, there is the small navigational issue of herding all the children back into the same lift simultaneously while correctly remembering whose turn it is to push the button and then out to the car without the need for any of them to practice their cartwheels in the hotel lobby or to have to go back up the lift to use the toilet because they suddenly remember they have a bladder or we need to find a missing shoe.

This is why we never go to restaurants. It is all just a bit too hard. We thought we were over the days of needing to bribe our children to behave in certain social settings. We're not quite there yet. We may need to wait another 12 months to see how far along the etiquette path we have travelled. In the meantime, it is strictly McDonalds drive-through for us.

Easy vegan chocolate cake

This is a delicious never-fail chocolate cake recipe and surprises many people when they learn it is dairy and egg-free. I make this cake regularly and it is always a hit with everyone who eats it. Even if you are not vegan, it is a handy recipe to have for the times when you have no eggs or milk in the house and is very quick and easy to make so there is no excuse not to make it now is there?

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

1/4 cup cocoa

1/3 cup oil

1 cup cold water

1 tablespoon white vinegar

Combine all but vinegar and mix until smooth.

Fold in vinegar.

Bake at 180°C for 30-50 minutes depending on tin size (30 minutes is sufficient in a 22cm cake tin).

Icing - Combine sufficient icing sugar and cocoa to your taste and mix with hot water to desired consistency. Spread onto cooled cake.

Source: Essentially Food Feb/March 2005. Recipe given to me by our neighbourhood baking queen, Steph.

DIY - Crochet name cake topper

1. Begin with a slipknot on your hook.

2. Feed the end of the wire through the slipknot and bend the wire back on itself so it stays in place. You may need to hold both the end of the wire and the yarn tail at this early stage while you start to crochet along the wire.

3. Pass your hook under the wire and do a single crochet.

4. Continue to single crochet along the wire until you have enough wire covered to begin forming some letters. (My capital letter is 6cm tall and the lowercase letters are 4cm tall).

Once you are happy with how the name looks, cut the yarn and the wire, leaving enough length on the wire to wrap it around one of the skewers. Tie off the yarn. Using your wool needle weave the yarn tails back through a letter to hide them.

Wrap the wire at each end around a skewer. Stand back and marvel at your amazingness.