Dedicated Months

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.

The new year is fast approaching and let's hope that it is better than the one we just survived. 

In 2021, join me in creating dedicated months to achieve some goals. Your goals may be to slow down on buying supplies, get a pile of pictures into scrapbook pages, using a stash of fabric, learn something new or focus on a crafting technique. My goals are to declutter, organize and clean my craftroom and to work on my list of unfinished projects. 

January is a month of taking back your craftroom. In December, my craftroom becomes the place to wrap presents, complete Christmas projects, a dropzone for "oh my, people are coming over - we'll tidy the house and drop it all in the craftroom". 

I don't mind taking a break in January to clean and reorganize my craftroom, as I have been working on Christmas crafts for the past two months. However, don't get me wrong, I will likely have gotten some new crafting toys from Santa and will play with those when I take a break from cleaning. 

February is a month for not start anything new. I will use February to work on my UFOs - Un-Finished Objects. I don't plan on getting them all done but if I can get 2-3 of them done, then I will be further ahead than I was. 

So that is the plan. Now, I would like to repeat that plan at least one more time during the year. If I look at my calendar and historically what my schedule looks like for the remainder of the year, I know that June/July is another time that I am focused on getting projects done and August seems to be a time where I don't feel very crafty but in the mood to organize. 

My dedicated months for 2021 will be:

• January - declutter, organize and clean my craftroom
• February - work on UFOs
• July - work on UFOs
• August - declutter, organize and clean my craftroom

Maybe I will post some before and after pictures on my Instagram page @craftycanadianladies.

What will your dedicated months be and what do you plan to focus on during that time?

Wishing you and your family a safe, relaxing and happy holiday and all the best in the new year.

Rag Doll

Happy mid-month,

My friend inspired me to make a rag doll. She made one, two and possibly 3 rag dolls for her daughter. 

I have never made a rag doll before and thought I would give it a try.

She is about 15.5 inches tall and from finger tip to finger tip, she is 12.5 inches wide.

The pattern for the doll came from the book called My Rag Doll by Corinne Crasbercu. The book contains patterns and instructions to make 11 rag dolls with different outfits and accessories. 

Before sewing the doll together, I embroidered her face. Actually, Heather's face. Embroidery Library has a collection of girl, boy, women, and traditional rag doll faces. They have a library of approximately 164 faces with corresponding names. 

Other than embroidering Heather's face, creating her hair was the most fun. She has A LOT of hair. I used almost a whole skein of yarn. I thought it was going to be difficult to add hair and I had no clue how I would even approach such a task. Thank you YouTube. I watched a couple of videos and it was the clear instructions from LearnCreateSew that helped me create and attach all her hair. 

Heather's hair was the only supply that I had to buy, otherwise she is made of scrap fabric and sewing notions that I had. 

Let's hope that in 2021 Heather will find a good home.