'Chip' the needle felted Jack Russell, doting pet for a Red Nose Day Doll!

After the success and admiration of Salty the sea dog, I was left feeling bereft by his absence!

The best way to cure such sadness was to create a new friend for one of the Red Nose Day Dolls.

'Chip' is a sweet and shy little Jack Russell

With fine markings and a happy wagging tail!

His little face just makes you want to kiss him and melts your heart!

Like 'Salty' he wanted a unique little tie around the neck and being a shy little gentleman I decided to make him a rather splendid bow tie!

Dapper don't you think?

...and of course as its all for Red Nose Day he was given his very own Red Nose. (He seems to wear his a lot better than Salty!)

Ive also made a special box for him, like Salty it has his name embroidered on the top!

Bless him, I do miss him too now he is at Red Nose Day Dolls HQ.

So, if you want to get your mitts on either Salty or Chip then head over to the Red Nose Day Dolls Ebay page where the auction is on for 10 days!

Each doll has a small collection of fab pieces each made by clever crafts people.

You will find Salty in Macs trousseaux....

...and Chip is in Blossoms trousseaux!

As you can see, all 4 dolls are rather excited about their fame, interviews in The Guardian, TV  appearance on Graham Nortons Big Chat show and of course....

                                       

Mac, Salty and the cat with no name have their own film!

Enjoy and get bidding!

Tiny Empty Stockings

Hello! My name is Rebecca Cobb and I am a children's book illustrator. You can see my work and books here: Rebecca Cobb Illustration

I cannot believe how beautiful the Red Nose Day Dolls are with all their tiny hand-crafted clothes and accessories. I was admiring them from afar and wondering what else they might like when I was very happy to be asked if I could make them some miniature copies of The Empty Stocking. 

The Empty Stocking is the brilliant, funny (and also a tiny bit sad but I can't tell you what happens or how it ends because it will spoil it if you haven't read it) Christmas story written by Richard Curtis. This is very appropriate for the Red Nose Day Dolls because Richard Curtis is the founder of Comic Relief and Red Nose Day so it is the perfect book for the dolls to have as a bedtime story. I was very lucky that I got the chance to illustrate the book and it meant that I had all the pages and was able to make four mini versions for this project.

It took me a long time to work out which pages would need to be next to each other and back to back with each other so that when the book was bound together the story would read in the right order. It also took a while to get my printer to print the back of the pages perfectly in line with the front of them but after a bit of jiggling about and cutting the edges off the paper it worked, hooray!

After cutting out all the doll-sized pages I folded them and sewed them together and then trimmed all the edges to make it neat.

Next I made little cardboard covers with the cover illustrations wrapped around and stuck down.

And finally I stuck the pages into the covers using the endpapers to hold the whole book together.

Now they look just like the original books.........but much, much smaller!

I hope the dolls enjoy their books as much as I enjoyed making them!

The dolls and all their wonderful accessories are being auctioned to raise money for Comic Relief and you can also sponsor them here. Keep following this blog and the Red Nose Day Dolls pages on Facebook and Twitter for more information. 

Bake Me a Cake

 Hello! My name is Gina and I blog over at Fan My Flame. I love all sorts of textile related crafts but most of all I am a machine embroiderer. I have been watching with absolute delight at all the wonderful things that have been made for the Red Nose Day Dolls and couldn't imagine there was anything left that these lucky little dolls could need. But then Emma suggested I might make an apron for when the dolls do a spot of baking...

What a perfect idea! Especially as my other great love is baking cakes. So I set to work straight away and made two tiny aprons decorated with machine embroidered applique.

Perhaps the dolls will have their own Comic Relief Bake Off?

It was so much fun making tiny versions of my own baking apron.

But what's this... it looks as though the dolls have already started baking...

Little cakes all ready for their picnic!

What lucky dolls they are!

And what a lucky blogger I am to be able to take part in such a fun project.

Lets hope it makes lots and lots of cash for Comic Relief. Remember, as well as following this blog you can keep up to date on Facebook and Twitter as well as supporting the fundraising here.

Micro quilting ...

Hello! I'm Tracy and I blog over at Dragonfly.  I am a passionate crafter, like many of the other contributors to this wonderful project, and was delighted when Emma asked if I'd like to make a tiny quilt for Mac.

It didn't take me long to pull out some boyish blues from my fabric stash and start planning. Up for the challenge of down-sizing my usual makes, I decided to recreate the quilt I made for my teenage son last year. Only this time, the 8" squares were a miniscule 1".

All 192 of the teeny squares needed trimming down for accuracy - phew!

As I played with the layout in my sewing room, I prayed that a sudden breeze from a closing door wouldn't blow all the pieces off the table!

Finally, I was ready to go and sew them all together.

I'm hoping that Mac will perhaps take a rest from an afternoon of happy fishing and lay back on the riverbank on his very own quilt.

Do keep popping by here to see how things are progressing. Or why not follow us on Twitter or Facebook. You can also donate to the auction here.