Abby Glassenberg's Asleep Awake Doll

Oh, hi! Remember when I used to blog regularly? It seems that Instagram has become so much easier for posting my sewing progress that I've neglected this poor old blog. I'm still an avid keeper of my sewing spreadsheet, which has morphed so much over the years that I might do a new post about how I keep myself organized. But I was starting to miss being able to see a quick snapshot of the projects that I have completed over the course of a year, so I'm going to make every attempt to bring this blog back, if only to write a little more in-depth about my finished projects than IG allows. Get ready for some massive catch-up for this year (in no particular order)!

First up, Abby Glassenberg's Asleep Awake Doll! I loved these adorable dolls when I first saw the pattern but resisted purchasing it until I had an actual need, which happened to coincide with a sale. Bonus! I made one for my adorable niece's first birthday and, since I had originally wanted to make one for my daughter, I decided to make two at once. This pattern is so quick and easy! I could have made them both in one night had the Olympics not taken over my entire life before the birthday party. So this little dolly got gifted a little late. Thankfully the birthday girl nor my friend minded!

I made a couple of adjustments as I sewed these little cuties up. First, I cut out the fabric pieces for the awake side of the doll first, sewed them together except for the head, and then used the body of the awake side to cut out the asleep side (the awake side uses different fabric for the arms/legs/body/shoes while the awake side uses one fabric for the entire body/shoes). This was much quicker than taping together the pattern pieces to cut out the asleep body as the instructions state and now I can reuse the pattern pieces without having to cut/rip apart the taped pattern pieces. Plus I ended up with exact copies of the asleep and awake sides, which worked nicely when I was sewing the two sides together.

My second adjustment was to use embroidery floss to sew the hair pieces onto the head. The pattern calls for you to sew the hair pieces on with your machine, but honestly I forgot to pick up matching thread when I bought the felt and I didn't feel like going back out for such a tiny amount of thread. Since I have a crazy large embroidery floss stash, I easily found the perfect color and used that instead. I love the texture it adds! And aren't the pigtails adorable?

The best part about these dolls is that they're entirely made from scraps except for the felt and the flannel. I wanted these to be girly, and the only flannel I have in my stash are small pieces from my epic I Spy bag production or remnants from my nephew's explorer vest. Neither would work! I was able to cut both dolls from a fat quarter of flannel though, so the additional fabric wasn't a huge expense.

I will definitely be making a boy version for our little guy when arrives in November!