The internet just was restored (Sunday afternoon) in our stormy area. It disappeared yesterday in a power outage that came back fairly quickly but the cable people were not so lucky. It was so cold and stormy I resisted all my urges to make "real" babies in order to stay in the house where heaters were keeping us warm. However I could not resist making a different kind of dolls. Renee had sent me two magazines and a book of historical dolls last week. In the one magazine were instructions for making a doll out of a hanky - an idea first published in 1949. Seeing it I had memories of making dolls out of a hanky in church during the sermon, but this one was different. I could not rest until I had tried it out to see how they made arms out of part of the tubes. I had no men's hankies so I cut out a 12" square of fabric. I chose the flannel thinking the surface would have more grab and so hold together better. Too much, too thick. Here was my first attempt. I did use old tablecloth for the head and saw how well that worked. She ended up a bit spooky looking so I set her as guardian angel over the tiny silicone baby in the cradle purse on the shelves. 

I had to try again with more of the tablecloth fabric from Mary. That worked much better but by then I was very tired and unable to position the head in the space between arms. Also while digging through the desk drawer I found in old porcelain doll face from years ago. I thought that would be more realistic but I see now that drawing a face on the doll, small and faint, was better. And this version needs a bonnet to cover up the head. I got so upset trying to thread a needle to make the necessary stitches that to preserve my sanity I had to give up and accept this half-ass attempt.

I did see that this was not the doll I remembered making in church. It had two babies in a cradle that could be rocked by swinging it between two hands. How to make that? I was amazed that as I started to line up the cloth square the instructions flowed into my head. Within seconds there it was. Instead of rolling the tubes on the straight of a square one rolled the diagonal corners of a triangle. This was the kind of dollies I had made in umpteen church sermons.

 The corner of my eye was still on the other doll instruction  (in Doll News 1990) in ways to add faces and I could not stop after all this success.

Maybe you can see the babies better in this picture with faces added to define them. Still to this day, swinging these little tube babies back and forth comforted me and changed all the nervousness I was feeling from the storm. I did not even care that the internet was gone and I could not post my great adventure so maybe one other person could share it.