Sock Monkeys RULE!!!

This monkey may very well be the 17th monkey in our project to provide a Sock Monkey Christmas for the COPE students at Harbor High this year; our Delta Kappa Gamma group has adopted these students this Christmas and is helping their teachers with Christmas gifts for the children and their student-parents.I love to make sock monkeys, and have hopefully converted a few more sock monkey afficionados in the process!!

Two more Toy Drop Toys

These dolls are made from scraps that I'm quite sure sensible people would toss!!

Toy Society 2011 Christmas Drop, Toy # 5, Little Striped Guy

 

This is my all time favorite kind of toy to make. He is made of pieces of fabric and scraps of stuffing that 99.9% of sane people would toss into the round file. But not me! I have this overwhelming compulsion to make "stuff" out of "nothing." Thus, I save everything and throw away nothing!!! I am every neatnik husband's worse nightmare!! (Bwah ha ha ha ha!!!!)



Now She Has Arms and is Done

 

Toy Society 2011 Christmas Drop, Toy # 4

This is my unfinished fourth toy for the Toy Society's 2011 World Wide Christmas Drop. She is made  mostly from scraps, with a little of my hand-dyed fabric for her body/shirt. Her dress is made from a cut-up baby dress from a thrift shop. I look at thrift store clothing with a different eye than most: I see them as raw materials for my toys (I am partial to stripes and polka dots), whether it be a wool cat or a small doll, or doll clothes. I really don't like sewing doll clothes, so if I can shorten the process by making the clothes from other clothing, with ruffles already sewn, that appeals to me. All she needs now is arms.

She is a "keeping doll" as the pocket from the baby dress forms the front of her dress. It can hold all sorts of things: baby teeth, rings, coins, pictures, notes, etc.

Blue Sock Monkey Ballerina

I'm leaving her at Six Rivers Gallery tomorrow.

This Year's Christmas Drop Toys, one, two, and three

Here are my first three toys for the 2011 Toy Society World Wide Christmas Toy Drop:

 I thought a baby might like this silky kitty toy.

 

This chubby softy was made from little scraps of fleece someone gave me to stuff dog beds with, and some of it WILL go there, but some of  it was meant for a higher purpose, I thought.

This funny girl was made out of repurposed materials, too. Her hair is made of fleece "strings" also meant for dog bed stuffing, but hey, it made great hair for her!!

I don't spend more than a couple hours on each toy, but making something out of nothing is a habit of mine, and I find it endlessly entertaining and challenging, too. What can I say?! I'm easily entertained!!