Playing paperdolls

My mother used to sing a song for me as a child that said, "Oh little playmate, come out and play with me and bring your dollies 3, climb up my apple tree". Such a sweet and innocent song.

Today I have been doing a purly "grandmama" thing. My beautiful granddaughter will love it, I hope. Even if she does not, I truly had a fun time doing this and I really feel she will enjoy it.

For those of you who are grandmothers, I think you will enjoy doing something like this just as much as I did and I do believe our granddaughters will have fun when we are done. Or maybe, if you live close to each other, you can do this together.

I played paperdolls!

Now how many of you played with these lovely, inexpensive toys when you were younger? I certainly did. They let me use my imagination and I was the one in control of all the movements, not some computer. Paperdolls gave us hours of quiet time, just us and our dolls. They did not require a lot of space to store, I imagine most of us used an old shoe box to hold all our paperdolls. We could have a box for each type doll or put them all in one box and then spend time sorting all the clothes, making certain that we only put the ones that fit on to the dolls. Or mix and match and put left facing clothes on a right facing doll (kind of political isn't it?)

The new paperdoll fabric is so adorable, I just had to play with it. I knew if I made a quilt it would be just darling, however, Rowan would not enjoy it much as she would want to pick up the dolls and play and that would not be possible. So...what to do? (I did make a yellow brick road out of the coordinates).

First I ironed some of the dolls on Fast-2-Fuse, a stiff product that is 'sticky' on both sides. It is firm enough to hold the dolls and yet soft enough for little hands. I ironed the dolls on one side then turned it over and ironed a pink, 1930s print on the back. You must iron from both sides to make it work. Now I cut out around all the dolls. The project is now somewhat 3-D. I then used Fraycheck around all the sides to keep them from fraying.

Now we needed clothes. I ironed some of the clothes fabric on to Steam-A-Seam 2 with muslin on the back. I did this to add some body to the clothes. Cut them out just on the lines and be certain to keep the 'tabs' to fold over.

When these are all done, use sticky-backed Velcro on the back of the dolls and the loops part on the tabs of the clothes and your little one can dress her dollies for hours of fun.

What a wonderful time we, as grandmothers, can have making these darling things and what fun for our granddaughters to enjoy. And since they are all fabric, we do not have to worry that they will get torn as our paperdolls did.

You can find the fabric on my website at www.quiltersqtrs.com for hours of fun.