Shirring

This is a little doll dress I made.  I didn't have a pattern for a Cabbage Patch doll dress, so I looked at a doll dress I had.  I cut a long rectangle for the main part.  Then I folded it in half and used the doll dress to cut out arm holes.  I had never shirred before but had read about how to do it here.  It was EASY!  You just wind elastic thread by hand on the bobbin and then sew like normal.  The trick is when you finish, you lay your steam iron gently on top of the shirring (don't move it around at all) and the shirring tightens up and looks like this:

Then I cut some bias for the straps and added a little ruffle on the hem for fun.

Fishing Anyone?

I made a little fishing set out of felt for Caden's birthday.  I didn't take very good pictures of it.  Here you can see one of the fish by Caden's hand.  The eyes are velcro, and the end of the fish hook has velcro on it, too.

Zara discovered that it's easier to pick up the fish by the felt on their bodies.  I got the idea for the fishing set here.  I did change the directions a bit because I couldn't pull the body through the opening on the fin like it said.  I made my opening on the bottom of the fish and it was easy to pull through.  I used the end of a chopstick to poke out the corners.  I had read about doing that and it worked really well.