Birkat Chaverim Blog

I think I neglected to mention that this doll clothing making chug takes place in Jerusalem. I thought I would mention it now.
For the fourth week I originally thought we would do accessories because of the smaller amount of sewing required. in the end one girl decided she wanted to do a skirt and top (minimal sewing) and the others finished off their shorts. I on the other hand made slippers out of cardboard and electrical tape for my daughter’s doll.

I am getting more requests about the chug. I got a call from a mother who would like to bring two girls, a sister who wants to send her sister and the mother of two sisters. I think if I get all the extra girls, I will try to enforce a everyone working on the same sort of project at the same time rule so that i will be able to help everyone with the same sorts of problems at the same time. I think i will also enforce a clean up regime so i dont end up cleaning everything up.
I have been warning the girls who don’t have the patience to sew that some of their workarounds are not going to work in the long run. Gluing foam accents onto fabric with “Elmer’s glue” is not a long term solution.

I hadn’t run a doll clothing workshop ever, and its been a while since i’ve run craft classes for children. I came up with a list of what I thought we might do and figured we’d play it by ear:

Sock and stocking shirts, pants- I bought some ready made felt and fabric applique items to decorate
elasticized shirts
foam hats and flip flops
felt shoes
bags, watch, wallet
hair and other accessories

That was the original list. So far We’ve done sock items (dresses, skirts, shirts, and a bathing suit!) for Build a Bear and Barbie. I then made these shorts for my daughter out of a tshirt and decided that we should do that next. The girls asked  to do t-shirt skirts next, but as you’ll see that hasn’t quite happened. Eventually we’ll do skirts from sleeves and circle skirts.I asked the girls to bring doll/bear and junk! Unmatched socks, old ratty clothing or whatever their folks wanted to throw out. They are enjoying turning “garbage” into neat stuff.