Craft Hope

We don't have a ton of extra money around here for charity. We give what we can, most regularly to St. Jude and Heifer International. But you always want to do more. Luckily, I spend a lot of time reading blogs. And luckily, many of the women who write those blogs have the resources and wherewithal to gather the mama-troops to do good in a more creative, more heartfelt way than just writing a check (not to belittle check-writing--I think that's likely what charities want more than anything else).

My point, and I do have one, is that I have recently happened upon Craft Hope. It is, in Jade's words, "a faith-based, love-inspired project designed to share handmade crafts with those less fortunate. It is our hope to combine our love for crafting and desire to help others into a project to make a difference around the world."

Although we clearly are not a religious family, (and even if we were, I don't think we're the same religion as other contributors to Craft Hope) I think all mothers live mainly on faith and we'd all do whatever we could to make sure that babies and children everywhere have not just what they require in terms of food and shelter, but what they need, in terms of love and kindness.

So, (I do carry on, I know) the current project is for us mamas to make dolls to send to the Casa Bernabe orphanage in Nicaragua with Eren of Vintage Chica. Please read this post for more information because every time I try to summarize it here I start crying. So, you know. Go there.

Anyway, I made some dolls. I've never attempted anything like this before, and I may have been a touch ambitious, but I did my very, very best. And I hope if you have a few scraps of fabric, a sewing machine and a couple of hours to spare, you'll join Eren & Jade in their quest to make the world a little better, a little brighter for those who have far, far less than we and ours.

I made a total of seven dolls, so I rocked an assembly line like Ford, yo.

OK, maybe not exactly like Ford since I got to eat strawberries & drink coffee while I worked.

Dash & I drew some hearts onto red fabric and I stuffed the cut-outs into each doll. I hope, hope, hope they carry with them some of the love and goodwill our family feels toward the sweet doll recipients.

Because they wanted the dolls to resemble their new mamas and papas, Eren & Jade requested that they have brown eyes and hair.

Here they are. I made three girls & two boys. The girls are wearing dresses from the sweetest fabric I could find. The boys are rocking baseball jerseys & red pants.

The pattern is from Black Apple, via Martha. The pattern calls for you to paint the face once the doll is finished, but I was fairly certain I'd eff it up, so I painted the faces before sewing them up. Good thing, too. I screwed up about five.

As I was digging through my stash for fabric, I happened upon some sweet orange and yellow felt, so I made a doll for our favorite little redhead, Erin, and one for Dash.

Here they are all together.

And again, being studious.

Here is the part where I would joke about how I bit off more than I could chew, blah blah blah. But that would sound like complaining, and I am absolutely nothing but privileged to be able to participate in this project, so no. I won't complain. I will, though, mention to the novice sewer (like me) that maybe seven is a lot of dolls to get right. Try two to start.