Sunday, October 19, 2008

Maisy


Jenna loves Lucy Cousins' Maisy and her friends. She has read quite 
a few of the Maisy books-owned and from the library and has watched 
her lone Maisy DVD over and over again. I generally am not crazy 
about characters but I must say that Maisy is a sweetheart. And we 
credit Maisy for teaching Jenna the entire alphabet. 

It wasn't easy as easy finding Maisy merchandise here as in the UK 
where she has a pretty decent following so I went online to see if 
Maisy softies existed. They did, but they looked nothing like the 
charming two-dimensional characters in the books.   

So in July I sewed Jenna a Maisy doll, which she has since carried 
around quite a bit. I was busy with other projects since then so poor 
Maisy was starkers for the next few months. Worse than the lack of 
clothes was my omission of her belly-button. Grr. This past fortnight, 
though, I rectified the belly-button thing,

gave her some clothes

and made her some friends! 
You can tell by the look on Maisy's face that it was 
all not a moment too soon.

Here's Charley

Eddie (my favorite) in his orange swimming trunks

Cyril

Tallulah

Little Black Cat

Ostrich

and Panda.

The dolls were made of fleece, as were their clothes, with the 
exception of Tallulah's dress and Maisy's and Charlie's shirts. 
All the clothes are removable, which seemed to be very important 
to Emily, who had been watching the progress of this project with 
great interest. The staff in JoAnn were probably not very pleased 
with me holding up the cutting line with my huge bales of colored 
fleece, wanting only a quarter yard of each. I used to like felt for softies 
but have since discovered that fleece is a fabric with much more 
give - the seams are smoother after stuffing. The tradeoff is that 
embroidery is tougher - the fleece tends to stretch, especially small 
pieces of fleece like the ones for Cat's and Panda's faces. I looked at 
Panda's sad, misshapen eyes when he/she was finally completed 
and felt a mixture of remorse and pity.


Here's the Bus Bag to contain them all. Maisy drives several vehicles 
in the stories and I thought the bus was easier than, 
say, a tractor or an entire train.

Lots of applique. Discovered I had an applique foot in my accessories 
box after all - came with the machine and I never knew. I am most 
gratified that the Bus Bag was made entirely of scraps. Apart from 
the interfacing and piping which I went out to buy, I used whatever 
was in the remnant box, including the zip (recycled from an old duffle). 
The bag, surprisingly, took almost as long to make as all of Maisy's 
friends put together -joining the scraps together, I suppose.
 I like to think of it as my version of a quilt.

Why did I finish this two whole weeks before Jenna's birthday? 
Arggh. 
It's all I can do to stop myself wrapping it up right now 
and giving it to her.

Here's another character I sewed a softie of in the pre-blog days. 
Last year I made Lowly Worm for Emily who loves Richard Scarry's 
Busy People stories. His red running shoe is removable too, as is 
evident from the wear and tear in the picture:

and because I had only two children then, I also made the apple car 
that he rides and flies around town in- yes, the windshield is 
transparent plastic. If I remember right, I cut up one of those bags 
that mattress protectors come in. 

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the car is biggish - 
Lowly himself is about 18" long.

Going to take a break from sewing toys for a while. 
Need to get back to my poor neglected family. Plus, it's
10 days till Halloween and I need to get started on Emily's costume.
Will post pictures of that when it's done and then 
I can finally begin the big sewing project for Christmas! 
More on that later. I get shivers just thinking about it. 

26 comments:

  1. jerome took one look & said,"that's cool!". i absolutely agree! i dread his next statement. "can we do it?" hey! his mum is not amazing L! :)

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  2. Gosh, this is another one of your amazing projects that took my breath away! Charlotte loved Maisy until she outgrew it and discovered other videos like Hi-5. When I showed my mom your Maisy, friends & bus bag, she commented "She's such a genius! So jealous!" LOL :D

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  3. I LOVE that elephant! The detail work on these are fantastic. It would be worth a detour to wintry MN in March just to see them "live" in person! xoxox

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  4. i luv wat u did here...Maisy and friends look so CUTE. I also want.

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  5. There really isn't anything you don't do! I loved the little maisy cupcakes, too! I would love to award you my "super blogger" award, but I see someone else already noticed your talent and gave it to you :-)

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  6. This is just so wonderful! What a lucky girl your have.

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  7. I just found this while looking for softie tutes - this is amazing! My oldest had a Maisy party when she was 5 (now 10) and we couldn't find Maisy anything. This is brilliant!

    I made an epic Maisy cake using the candy melt drawing method and made extra candy melt characters for the goody bags. I wonder if making softies would have been much easier, lol!

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  8. Oh! I still have the Lowly Worm my Mum and I made when I was a kid. My own kids have taken to carting him around & I am planning on getting the books. I might just have to make the car!!

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  9. These are just glorious! There are a few months to go until my Maisie-mad daughter turns four and I now know exactly what to make her for her birthday. Such fantastic inspiration. I'd never have thought of this. Thank you.

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  10. These are fantastic - I'd love to know how you made the pattern for the Maisy characters. Did you just trace from the books? araceli . santos (at) gmail

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  11. @AraS
    Yes, AraS, that's exactly how I did it.

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  12. Another question - is maisy's nose a pompom? or did you make a tiny fleece circle?

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  13. @AraS
    It's a fleece circle gathered into a ball.

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  14. Thanks so much for answering my questions. I appreciate it!

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  15. I would love to make these but can't find the link to the pattern? Thanks in advance x

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  16. @Anonymous
    Anonymous, I did not provide a pattern.

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  17. Found you through Pinterest and I love your creative spirit!
    It's a joy to see your projects.
    suki

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  18. Wow! These are just gorgeous! It's my daughter's 2nd birthday in June, and Maisy and friends are her favourite books and programmes (I live in South Africa so we don't really get it here but I order them from overseas). We don't have any maisy dolls here either, do you sell the pattern? My mom would love to make these for her birthday. All the best, Tracey

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    Replies
    1. Hi Tracey! Thanks for your kind words. No, I don't have the pattern for these dolls. I made them using images from Maisy books and this simple technique:

      http://www.ikatbag.com/2009/08/how-to-make-2d-character-softie.html

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  19. Thank you so so much!! I am so excited at the thought that Maya could have all her own maisy characters to play with, and something that her nanny can make especially for her! Many thanks!! Tracey

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  20. These are wonderful! I was thinking recently of making something similar for my son. Now I know it's possible and I might just give it a try.

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  21. did you usee a guide or a tutorial? if not can you upload one for us? my niece is turning two in feb and she just loves maisy! i would love to make her her own maisy and some friends.

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  22. Great work! I can see that you have lovingly made them for your daughter, very inspirational. Yes Maisy fans (including my little one) would absolutely adore what you have done!

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  23. These are absolutely brilliant. My son and daughter are also huge Maisy fans, I think we have borrowed every Maisy book our library owns several times. I crochet stuffed toys and have been meaning to work up a Maisy pattern for a while. Your blog may just have given me the inspiration to finally do it :)

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  24. I found your blog while looking for a gift for my soon 3 years old son who loves Maisy... If you want to sell the puppets m to me or make an other similar game I will be so happy to buy them from you... because I am not as good in sewing than you are !
    Sorry for my not so good English, I am French.

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