A Good Night's Sleep

We all know that the perfect bed is an essential ingredient for a good night's sleep and I'm sure its no different for dolls! When Sophie received her first dolls as Christmas presents wonderful Grandpa had the sleeping solution - from the depths of his attic he found the doll's cot made by my Grandpa for me when I was a little girl in the 70s!

As soon as I saw it memories came flooding back, although I was never that into dolls, I do remember tucking up my teddies to sleep. It's this tucking in that Sophie spends much of her time doing - even trying to tuck in Finn but big brothers are less agreeable than teddies, dolls and Elmo!

As soon as I got the doll's cot home I knew I needed to make bedding for Sophie's dolls. I started with a mattress and pillows.

I bought some lovely soft purple ticking fabric, measured inside the cot and judged how deep i wanted the finished mattress to be. I decided that by piping both top and bottom would make it look more like the real thing and give me the chance to try something new. i made the piping by cutting long strip of fabric with the ticking stripes going the opposite direction to the main mattress body. 

I had a large stash of toy filling still so was able to stuff and hand sew the opening closed. 

I then found 6 small flower shaped white buttons. I sewed them all the way through to get the proper mattress effect.

With the small bit of fabric I had left I was able to make two pillows too!

I'm so pleased with the finished thing, the colours complement the old fashioned puppy image and slightly ageing paint work perfectly. In my next update I'll share the doll's quilt I've made...