New Girl in the House

I wish I could buy every Blythe doll ever made...but since I'm not a millionaire, I have to pick and choose, which makes each of my dolls really special to me.

 I am particularly drawn to the fantasy-haired girls, with pink and green at the top of my list. Here's my newest arrival: she is a 2007 release called Prima Dolly Melon. I managed to find her in "used" condition, so she was affordable, but she didn't come with her stock outfit (which I don't mind because I rarely use the stock clothes.) I love her soft coloring.

Naming a new doll has gotten harder with each one, because I've used all my favorite names already! My first thought for her was to incorporate her given name and call her Melany; but I don't love that name, so I thought of Melody. That's a little too musical for her, so I took off the "M", and now she is...

Elody!

She has moved right in and has taken quite a liking to our My Little Pony collection.

Welcome, Elody! We are so glad you are here!

The Surprising Origin of my Heart Pockets

I've started making these Heart Pocket dresses to sell in my Etsy store. Aren't they cute? 

I love to choose fabrics that coordinate well for the dress, and then come up with the perfect pocket design. You might be surprised to hear that these pockets started out as....

...scissor fobs!

I've always loved hearts, and a few years ago I challenged myself to make one heart every day for a year. I kept a blog about it here: 365 Sewn Hearts . It proved to be more and more difficult to come up with different hearts to make, until the middle of the year when I hit upon the idea of sewing scissor fobs out of felt. They were so much fun, I kept on making one every day for two months! 

I gave away a lot of the scissor fobs, but most of them just sat in a mason jar on a shelf until recently, when I decided to try using them as pockets on Blythe dresses. I was thrilled with how well they worked, so I plan to continue making these for the foreseeable future. 

 Here's how I started the bee dress: I had these perfect fabrics to match the bee fob, so I simply cut the fob apart to remove the back of the heart, then ironed it flat. I made the dress as usual, and added the pocket using hand embroidery. Cute!

I'm still using a lot of the scissor fobs for the pockets, but I'm also making new designs, or re-making some that I gave away. For these two identical dresses, I started by choosing the fabrics, then made new flower pockets to match them.

You can see all my newest creations in my shop: Blythe Happy