Whilst she doesn't watch it all that often, it's fair to say that Little Miss C is quite a fan of In The Night Garden and loves the characters in it. We are often asked to drawn Igglepiggle and Upsy Daisy for her and she loves dancing like Upsy Daisy whenever she can.
The only ITNG toys that she has are small ones that have been free on the cover of the show's magazine so she was thrilled therefore when my parents were given an Upsy Daisy plush toy for her by some of their friends. Now this Upsy Daisy had sadly lost her skirt at some point in the past and LMC was very quick to point of that Daisy had "no dress" so I was ordered to make one for her.
Whilst LMC was at nursery today I raided my fabric stash and sat down at my sewing machine to try to come up with something. As LMC can be quite particular about things I knew that I had to get the colours right to match up with what the "real" Upsy Daisy wears - although I drew the line about creating one that is inflatable like hers! I ended up mainly working with felt as that was all I had to get the colours right.
The waistband is yellow felt folded in half so that I could thread some elastic through it. The main body of the skirt is red felt with some white former bed sheet stuck on it with bondaweb. The skirt body is simply attached to the waistband and all sizing was done by holding the doll up to the fabric and estimating.
I'm reasonably pleased with the finished result. I didn't have long and also had a pounding headache at the time so I know that I could have done better, but possibly not today. I think the skirt would have been better if I had used a lighter red material, but I was limited to working with just what I had available this afternoon. It's also a bit long (you can normally see Upsy Daisy's stripy tights) so a version 2 would be made shorter.
I'm delighted to say that LMC was very pleased with the finished result and even held it up next to a picture of Upsy Daisy and said "same skirt". High praise from a toddler!
