Hello, Craftocados!

Apologies for missing posting the last thread, I’ve been busy and scattered, as I always get at this time of year. I just plain forgot. Yay, me! And I’m posting a day early this week because I won’t be around tomorrow or through the weekend. We’re back on our regular every-other-Thursday schedule for the next thread in two weeks.

Anyhoo, as always… Whatcha makin’?

This week, I was browsing the craft books at Ye Olde Value Village as I often do, and I was leafing through an older book that was starting to feel familiar as I went through it. I turn the page, and BAM! there was this:

This sewing pattern originally appeared in Canadian Living magazine, and I recognized other patterns in the book from my mom’s old Canadian Livings, which she subscribed to for many years. My mom made one of these dolls for me, along with a matching nightgown and hat out of the same fabric as the doll’s nightgown. I wasn’t really into dolls. I had a Barbie and some other dolls that mostly just sat untouched in my closet. I was more of a stuffed animal kind of kid. But I loved my Mary. She was soft and floppy and I could grab her by the arm, or around the waist, or flop her over my shoulder and drag her around. I had a little toy plastic shopping cart and when I was mad at my teddy bear as I sometimes was, she sat in the seat while I “shopped” for tiny little plastic groceries that I set up around the living room.

My mom continued making them, and all my female cousins got a Merry Mary doll and a nightgown for Christmas the year they turned… five or six, I think? The doll in the header picture isn’t my original Mary. I played with her until she died from it, I wore that doll out. My aunt had asked my mom to make her one, and that doll was given to me after she passed away.

My favourite part about her… she wears booties! You can see them poking out from under the dress here. This doll is over 30 years old, she’s holding up pretty well.