Make Your Own Easy Waldorf Doll Sized Felt Book

The other day I made a little book for our newest Waldorf Lass. Here I share the super simple tutorial so you can make your own.

This would be a great craft for young hands to help with!

 Start with a high quality wool felt. I chose Feltworks 100% wool felt from Michaels. 

Cut out 3in. X 3in. squares of felt. Then cut out small letters, shapes, or any other design you wish in a contrasting colored felt.

I chose the following design. Simple

After you have laid out your design, warm up your glue gun and glue the back sides of the letters. 

Then place the letter on the felt as you would like it placed. 

Hold pressure over the letter with your palm for a minute or two.

Then inspect the letter for secure attachment, and add additional glue where needed.

 Do the same for all of the other pages.

Then stack the pages as you like and using a blanket stitch (found here) secure the pages as you would find a book binding.

It doesn't have to be perfect,  and the pages don't have to be perfectly lined up. Makes for easier page turning by those little fingers ;)

Handmade stitches show love!

Enjoy! Thanks for looking.

::Windfall Doll Giveaway:: Meet Max and Meredith

 Welcome to our First Windfall Doll giveaway of 2013!

There will be two winners for this giveaway!

Four times a year we will be holding a seasonal giveaway of our Waldorf Inspired Dolls.  

For our Spring Windfall Dolls giveaway, we would like to introduce you to Max and Meredith.

There will be two winners in this giveaway, one for each doll. 

::

::A bit about Max and Meredith::

Max:: Latin meaning Little Maximus.
Meredith:: Welsh meaning Great Lord.

Yesterday was Easter.  
As with every Easter, we held a little egg hunt in our yard for our kids. 
Both human and cloth kids alike.

Little Max was a bit more adventurous than the other kids.  He ventured high onto the wood pile in search of the best eggs...the ones that he thought would be filled with the yummiest of candy. 

 As he rose higher and higher onto the pile and peeked over the top of a log, he noticed the top of the most beautiful purple eggs!  But once her got closer he saw that it was not an egg after all.

There, tucked into the wood pile was a little girl with the roundest and prettiest face that he had ever seen.  

Intrigued, he decided to take a closer look.  

And when he got right up to her, she surprised him by jumping into his arms and giving him the biggest of hugs.

She had been waiting all day to be found.  The fact that she was found by someone her size made her squeal with glee.

She introduced herself as Meredith and they became fast friends.

As the day of Easter passed they spent their time getting to know each other better.  Telling each other stories of their creation and playing with toys that Max had found while hunting for eggs.

They sat on a dry rock and set up the toys to play with.

The other kids had gone inside to count their own eggs and Max and Meredith took a wee nap under the high afternoon sun.

They've been inseparable ever since.  

This morning when I awoke to take pictures of them (for their big entrance into the world), I found Max assisting Meredith with her buns and bows.

:: The details::

Max and Meredith are a mere 11 inches tall and are made using our Lillipals Pattern... out of interlock, stuffing and wool. 

Each of their wardrobes are entirely handmade by us using both, new cotton and upcycled fabric.

  This was initially going to be a pair of lasses,  two little girlies with the brightest of hair and eyes to match.

But then I stared into those sweet little blue eyes of the slighter of the two dolls.... and I just got a feeling that there was a wild-hearted little boy under that mischievous little grin.  

My crochet hook and yarn ( mohair boucle and a worsted white ) began making a little hairdo and soon the scissors began working their magic.  Snipping here and there until a little toe-headed boy was revealed.
(Our tutorial for hair has now been updated with instructions for boy hair .)

Our first boy.

With the wildest/whitest of hair and the bluest of eyes.

His shirt is printed in his favorite animal and his pants have jagged hems from all of his outdoor adventures.

::

Miss Meredith is a real sweet with her lavender eyes and pouty pink lips.

Her pants are embellished with a little ladybug from the upcycled baby dress that we made them from.  

(it's her favorite part of her outfit )

 Her hair is pure wool and is styled in the biggest of buns that I could muster.  Each one tucked in tightly with a piece of ribbon in a big bow.

Her hair will fall nearly to her feet if it is taken out of her buns.  

Max says that it's as long as Rapunzel's!

::

As mentioned above, there will be two winners in this giveaway, one for each doll. 

If you are interested in having either Max or Meredith join your family, please let us know what it is that you love about either of them and how you will make either of them a part of your family.

Also, please like our Facebook page and leave a comment at the end of this post. The giveaway will be open for one week.  We will randomly choose TWO winners on April 7th and we will contact the winners via email.

Be sure to leave your email address in your comment so that we can contact you!

For an extra chance to win:

~Write about Windfall Dolls on your Blog (feel free to use a picture of Max and Meredith) and leave another comment letting us know that you did so.

Each comment counts as one entry

******

As always, it saddens us to mention this, but we just want to be clear.  Please do not comment if you are planning on selling these dolls.  They are meant to go to a family who will appreciate them.  It would break our hearts if they were given to someone with poor intentions.

A Sneak Peek at Our Spring Windfall Doll(s) yes...TWO OF THEM!!!!!

Here we will leave you with a sneak peek at our Spring Windfall Doll(s). 

As promised, there is a boy in the works for this next Windfalls Giveaway.  A wee little lad of the Lillipal variety.

BUT ( and here is the exciting part! )... there is also a girl to give away as well!

This season there will be TWO winners!  One for each of these little ones.

(A bit of an apology to you all for my selfishness that was Kendall.)

We will be sharing more about their story in a few days with the giveaway, but here is a sneak peek to tide you over.

We will be holding the giveaway for them on April 1st.  Stop back then and we will share these little ones with you in full.

And we promise...they WILL be making their way into the world to two new homes!
PROMISE.

Adirondack Patterns:The Growth of A Handmade Business

This week we reached 2 HUGE milestones as business owners.  We celebrated our Third Year in Business, and passed our 2000 sales mark! So exciting. 

It is amazing how far we have come, and how much our business has grown.  

Here are the sales for our first month in business March-April 2010 a whopping 12!

Slowly but surely we sold 198 orders for that year, and added a few more patterns to the shop. In total we had approximately 30 patterns in the shop by our first year anniversary.

Exciting right?

2011 was a landmark year! I had a new baby, and therefore we had a new muse! We inundated our fledgling shop with new patterns, inspired by that babe.

 Julia's Waldorf doll patterns became more coveted and perfected, and we started advertising a bit with various blogs who emulated what we liked, or thought we would be a good fit with them. 

Here are some of the patterns born that year!

Waldorf Doll Patterns

 Baby Knit Booties Pattern

 Cloth Diaper Cover Pattern

 Crochet Cocoon Pattern

 Newborn Crochet Dress Pattern

The advertising worked, and the views of our shop for 2011-2012 year were over 57,000! Sales totaled 652 for that year alone~and business was as they say...booming!

More exciting, right?

Well, little did we know, 2012-2013 would be the biggest year yet!

Our traffic increased to over 90,000 hits, and our sales were over 800 orders!

Advertising continued to be our major source of traffic for 2012-2013 with a majority of the traffic coming from buttons we had on lovely blogs like Rhythm of The Home, Small Things, French Press Knits, and Smashed Peas and Carrots. Julia's Waldorf Doll Patterns seemed to be the "it" pattern for simple Waldorf Dolls, and word of mouth spread in the Waldorf World! Ravelry turned out to be a huge traffic source for our crochet patterns as well. We were selling internationally, with one of our biggest countries of sales being Australia!

We started a Facebook Page to help obtain more fans, and spread the word of mouth in the social media forum.  

Now we have over 600 fans!!!

The feedback we received over the years was crucial to the success of our shop, we love to hear what people have to say about our patterns! 

After much research, and soul searching we decided to put handmade swaddle and baby dolls in the shop this year! 

Here are a few of the newest additions!

Cane

Isobel

Ethan

A custom order

We are very excited for what this year has to bring! More creativity, a little more love, and many more little babies to craft, and of course meeting more new customers!

Thanks for liking us, and for reading this. Your support is so encouraging!

As a thank you, please use our 20% discount coupon code on any orders from our shop through the weekend! 

Enter code THREE20 at checkout.

Sincerly, Laura and Julia

A Confession :: Muse #2

Today, on a day that we would ordinarily be sharing with you all a brand new Windfall Doll for giveaway... we are not.

Instead, there is a confession that needs to be made.

Something that has been eating away at us for weeks.

At least three times over the past 2+ months we have kissed the cheeks of her precious face goodbye.  We have wrapped her up in tissue paper, written out the congratulations card, and tucked her into a box.  Only to find ourselves promptly tearing up the card and ripped into the tissue paper shrouding this sweet girl.

I feel a bit remorseful, embarrassed and even more so... selfish to admit this.  I had contemplated just not sharing this part of the story.  To continue to share photos and dolls here in this space and not share the story behind Kendall and her fate.

But I decided to be honest and let you all know that little Miss Kendall never made it off into the big big world.

I can not bring myself to let her leave.

The thing is, I think I knew that one of my dolls would eventually tug ever so strongly at my heart strings, begging me to stay.  Pleading with me to not put them in a box, wishing with all their heart to stay with their sister Emelia.

Sierra was actually the first to do this to us.  She was "this close" to not leaving me.  She was immensely hard to say goodbye to.  But I did and although I was very sad to see her go, seeing pictures of her in her new home makes it all so worth it.

When it came to Kendall, I decided to follow my gut.

Through the process of her making, I was continually falling in love with her.  I was smitten with her slightly off kilter eyes, her shiny strands of hair, her pants and tunic in my favorite shade of turquoise.  She epitomizes  what I want all of my dolls to look like.  I find her practically perfect in every way.  And so I chose to keep her.  To set the standard of what I want for my dolls.  To inspire me to follow her lead.

My second muse.  Emelia will always be my first babe...the doll that started it all.  The girl with skinny long arms, and a less stuffed body, the girl with the delicate features.  The one I fell in love with first. The little girl who's pattern we have tweaked and perfected until we were completely happy with it.

Until I created Kendall with our rectified pattern and I saw just exactly what this dollmaking thing is all about.

And so, I apologize,  but I will be keeping Kendall here with me and Emelia.

I am so happy knowing that Emelia and her will be together forever.  Snuggling under the covers together ever night, and helping each other to get dressed every morning.

My two muses.

And now the good news.

Please be sure that this is not the end of the Windfall Dolls, I have one in the works right now that is a little lad.  My first.  I can't wait to share him with you.  He is quite special, but I PROMISE that he will not have the same fate as Kendall.

He will be gifted to one of you.  
Our dear readers.