Handmade Princess Bride Westley Doll

"As you wish."

I've been meaning to share this for a while now. I mean, it's not every day I make a doll. In fact, I'd never made a real doll before last autumn, nonetheless a doll of the Dread Pirate Roberts (a.k.a. Westley) from the Princess Bride.

It must have been the pregnancy hormones that made me commit to this madness. I was bandying about ideas for a regular craft swap I do with a friend, and I mentioned making a doll for her wee son in return for a black, crochet baby blanket. I'd been looking for something to hone my sewing skills, since I'd mastered the skill of sewing two squares together. A doll was the next logical step, right?

To be fair, I started with a pattern I found on an Etsy store, Dolls and Daydreams. There's an adorable superhero boy pattern that served as a base for the body and the mask. Rather than making the legs, arms, and body in different colors, I went with black fabric. The tricky parts were the boots (made from upcycled pleather from a couch I skinned), the chest (trying to get that sexy, open-collar look), and the hair (how do I give a doll a ponytail?).

Appliqueing the face turned out to be rather challenging, too, but fun. The mask was made from the same upcycled pleather, but I used wool felt for the hair and mustache, and craft felt for the eyes. It's hard to tell from the picture below, but I machine stitched wavy lines of hair to make it more interesting. Freestyle.

"No one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley."

The chest issue was solved by cutting a slit in the chest fabric and sewing it open to make a "collar," and then sewing a triangle of flesh-colored fabric to fill in the space. I hand embroidered the criss-cross laces of the shirt with a simple back-stitch.

I figured out how to make the ponytail fairly easily: I stitched a little bit of felt to the back of the doll, so that when I sewed the head on it looked like a ponytail:

"Why won't my arms move?"

The boots. Oh lordy, those boots. Remind me, the next time I work with pleather, to make the legs BIGGER so I don't have to turn thick, stiff fabric in a one-inch-wide tube. It took me half an hour each to turn those legs!

I am exceedingly pleased with how my first doll came out, and most importantly, I learned a lot (#&@*ing pleather). It was hard for me to let him go, even though I knew he was going to a good, geeky home. It'll be a while before I have the time or space to make another doll, but fortunately, it'll be a while before my own wee son can play with dolls. If I start now, I can have it done by his 5th birthday.

Star Wars Easter Eggs on eHow

Look, Ma! My hand-painted Star Wars Easter eggs were selected to be part of an awesome slideshow on eHow.com!

Give it a looksee. There's some really great ideas for unique Easter eggs, and there's still enough time to plan ahead to be creative.

Unfortunately, I won't have time this year to sit down and do some involved painting, or get more crafty than PAAS. 'Cause, y'know...baby. But someday, perhaps, I'll be able to expand the collection. There's some Star Wars characters that would look pretty boss in egg form.

Also, welcome to those of you here from eHow! I hope you enjoy my other crafty creations if you stick around to take a peek.

Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted

I'm a big fan of the Assassin's Creed video game series. I used to find running along the digital rooftops of Italy as calming as stitching (y'know, back when I had time to play involved video games and work on big embroideries), so it was natural to combine the two into one geeky, crafty project.

I started this project back in early 2011. To give you an idea of the size of the emblem, it's hung in an 8" hoop. My original idea was to satin stitch the whole thing in white for a sleek, textured effect. After an inch or two of stitches, though, I realized the logo was too big, and there would be saggy bits. No good.

So, I scrapped that idea, but not the whole project. I'd been dabbling in acrylic paint around the time, so I got the idea to paint the logo onto the fabric, then embroider on top of it. I was inspired by Ezio's (the protagonist of the second series of AC games) color palette, and opted for burgundy paint and silver thread.

I couldn't just stop at outlining the emblem. Oh, no. I wanted this to be something truly special. So, for the first time, I experimented with freestyle embroidering.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny, meticulous stitches went into this. It was both wonderfully meditative, letting the stitches take my fingers where they wanted to go, and pretty annoying, as metallic thread is damn finicky. It got so bad I put the project down with only about three inches on one leg to go, and didn't pick it up again for over a year.

I resuscitated the project in the ninth month of my pregnancy, as I was tying up loose ends on my crafting projects. It only took me a couple of evenings to complete, including mounting it in a silver-painted hoop.

After all that work, there was only one thing I could do with it: give it away. I gave it as a Christmas gift to my brother, the one person I knew would truly appreciate it, both as an Assassin's Creed fan and as an artist. The look on his face was priceless.

When I have time, I'm planning on experimenting again with freestyle-stitched, mixed-medium embroidery. I could probably do with a little meditative crafting these days!

The Best Reason for Not Blogging

My baby boy Vincent. Born December 13, 2012 in Oakland, CA. He's now over a month old.

Not much time for blogging--or crafting, or writing, or anything else--when you're trying to get the hang of an entirely new way of life: diaper changes, round-the-clock feedings, obliterated sleep schedules. 

I admit it, this has been the hardest month of my life. I wouldn't have made it if it weren't for an incredible network of family and friends that rallied around my husband and I to offer tons of love, support, and hot meals. I now understand that saying, "it takes a village to raise a child." It's really, really true.

It's all been so very worth it, though. I love my little man like I've never loved anyone before. It's amazing to watch him develop slowly from an eat-sleep-poop machine to a human being. Sure, it's only been a month, but in that time he's come so very far. All of us have. I've gone from feeling like a terrified newbie into feeling like, well, a Mom. 

Here's to the first month, and to many, many more, my boy.