Tiniest dotee yet

I don't know what happened, here. I woke up one morning and spied the orange colour of these large beads in the bookcase near my bed.

Matryoshka nesting dolls (squeebles!)

These are the nesting dolls I sent to my partner for the Matroyska Doll Swap! on swap-bot, along with the accompanying note:

Squeebles are born colourless and with no way to express themselves. Their bodies are pure white, and their eyes are black pools , incapable of expression. Their only other feature is their black hair. To compensate for this, they dress in the most colourful clothes they can, they favourite colour being anything fluoro. Also they have no mouth, they express affection by forming nesting groups. Families are usually found in this conformation, similar to Matryoshka dolls!

I made them from fluoro felt sheets (the colours don't show up too well, the green really is obscenely bright!) and some small plastic flower decorations sent to me by Dot with a purchase.

The pattern for them can be found at Maize Hutton's site.

Here is a close up of the smallest one, because I love miniature things!


And here are the Squeebles, innocently surveying the chaos that brought about their creation :)

Another tiny dotee

After completing my last itty bitty dotees, I had an itching to do another one. There's something fun about working in miniature! Plus, I had a small piece of linen with a small bullion rose on it from when I was first learning the stitch which I wasn't sure what to do with.

This time I had no pattern, I just winged it. I played around a bit, using fly stitch for the eyes instead of all backstitch, and making a pointed bottom.

I had trouble working out how to differentiate the face from the body, as the colours don't contrast enough (although their textures do). I played around with surrounding it with beads, but they were too bulky for such a small dollface, and took too much attention away from the rose. I settled for some simple pink backstitching, which I could have achieved using blanket stitch, come to think of it :)

This was not for a swap, but was sent out to a swap-bot member who has severe health issues. There is a small heart dangling at the bottom of the dotee, which is a symbol other swap-botters have been using to show their support for her.

(I love the peachy colour of the back!)

Itty bitty dotee fever

In my last post, I mentioned that I was having to redo my doll for the Itty Bitty Dotee Swap on Swap-Bot due to fraying.

Well.... it's complete! Behold the complete wheat dotee! You'll notice that the hair changed completely from the original sketch - I still haven't worked out how to do yarn hair! I think the bullion ringlets are cute though, even though she now looks like she is called Helga and should be serving beers part of Oktoberfest! I managed to salvage the face off the first dotee, only redoing the french knots (one was loose)

The wheat is a little off-center, and the bottom a bit crooked - but it doesn't really matter!


Complete, Helga measures 4"... she has a 2" long torso (1 1/4" wide) and the hanger & tail measure about 1" each. I decided that that was not itty bitty enough! I'm sure my swap partner wouldn't mind, but I'm sending her an even ittier bittier one too anyway. It was so much fun to make!

I stuck with the nature theme again. Meet Lady Dotee Bug!


She's made entirely of felt (the ladybug is from a novelty printed felt square) and is truly tiny! She was much quicker to sew up, and I used blanket stitch around the edges. And she has french knot cheeks!

So just how much smaller is she?


She's about 2 1/4" tall in total. Her torso is just under 1 1/2" long (3/4" wide), her hanger is 1/2" long and her tail is just over 1/4" long.

Unless you count the pseudo-dotee pig, these are my first dotees! :)

So what's next? Not a dotee! For my next swap I have to make a flower-person ATC... we'll see how that goes!

---

• Related post: Incoming: itty bitty dotee