Friends and past selves...page 2 or inner cover

One of the optional parts of the book was the doll pocket and the dolls themselves. I think I did these quite late in the day and I kind of caved because I'd made lots of plushies before as you can see on this blog.

There was another pattern I could have bought for them, but I decided to free style.

This was not exactly wise as you may be able to see from the pair of them together. The newest doctor is fatter and larger than the fifth Doctor, because I'd had such a terrible time turning him right side out that I increased the pattern.

For those of you who don't know how I do that, I made a pattern and design, and then put together each site of the doll.

I then sew it together right side to right side, then turn inside out and stuff.

If you make the arms too thin, you spend a very slow time trying to get them the right way out, panicking that you will push too hard and make a hole in the fabric.

This is particularly bad if there is a thickened area, like where the hands meet the sleeves.
I survived, if with slightly wonky arms, and narrowly escaped forgetting his lovely celery stick thanks to an observant friend who saw my posted photos.

I haven't got a separate image of the pocket space the dolls are sitting in, but it was a rescue of a piece of fabric I accidentally melted, because me, and I rather like it. It reminds me of the rip in dimensions in one of the 11th Doctor episodes.

Obviously it was a lot easier to make 13 as she was a larger pattern all round.

I don't always make any of the clothes separately and removable, but often longer coats or jackets do get made separately, and I think in this case the lining goes all the way up the back piece, if not into the arms.

Some details in either doll do simply have to be left out because I can't make things that small but I loved adding in the earring and braces.

The Doctor is very very late

So in about 2012, a friend was going on about the Doctor Who Quiet Book. Well we all were, it was really cool. I was reading The Mary Sue A LOT back then and they had an article all about it (Doctor Who Quiet Book Mary Sue article). She wished someone would make it. I wasn't really into sewing much back then but I said I would do something smaller and she found a Doctor Who Plushie. This lead to a lot of  other plushies, which really opened the gateway to a lot of much large projects which you can find on this blog.

Fast foward to now, I've made a lot of large projects, my friend has a new baby and I'm like "I could totally make that book she wanted. It would be easy!". To my delight the pattern was still listed on Etsy, although the woman had changed her online name from Bantam BB to SpaceBat Designs (pattern for Doctor Who Quiet book on Etsy). And I mean it was 9 quid, why wouldn't I?

As I write, I've finished all 12 pages, and overall, it's been very quick really despite the fact that I only finished the previous project in June and I'd not even used much felt. I think what sped things up was that I'm only lightly tinkering with the pattern, and the patterns are larger than some of my previous projects. With my own projects I have to make a lot more decisions than just what fabric or materials am I using. It's been a lot of fun.

The Cover

So on to the cover page. The first choice I made was I was going to embroider on the title of the book rather than cut out felt letters or other fabric. I also decided that I would use the font and colour scheme of the newest Doctor. To do this, I found a picture online and traced it onto the interfacing, then retraced it backwards. I'd planned out my backing fabrics and the cover was set to be blue velvet. I got a bit overexcited and melted it a bit on the edges. I'm not very good at remembering past mistakes as this was not my first time slightly melting this fabric.
The embroidery for the lettering I used was the graded colour kind between a pale yellow and an orangey colour. I ran out with a tiny bit to go, but managed to colour match. Essentially it was fairly easy.

The tiny tardis was a bit harder without some actual blue felt, I was using a navy cotton I had lots of, but being small, it didn't take long.

To finish off the design and make it look more like space, I foolishly decided to try and use up some more of this awful embroidery thread that has gold coloured metal wrapped around it, which is hell on earth to sew with, but all in all for a few stars it was fine!