Day 14- Mini god's eye ornament

This is Day 14 of our Christmas Miniature Marathon. If you'd like, you can start with Day 1 and "Shrink Your favorite Books."
God's eyes are very cute when shrunk down to hang on the tree or display in the dollhouse window. They are also a very meaningful baby gift. Traditionally known as Ojo de Dios, the Huichol people of Mexico made them for a new baby. The father made the center eye, then a new color eye was added each year until the child reached age 5. So you will be misappropriating the tradition a bit, but you could make a tiny God's eye with 4 colors for a 4 year old, or a single color one for an infant.
I used two skinny balsa wood pieces for my cross and embroidery floss for the stripes (or eyes.) You also could use toothpicks. The pointy kind would be best as they are the same diameter their whole length.  
If you can't remember how to wind the thread you can visit Wikihow for a good step-by-step tutorial.

When I changed colors I tucked the old thread under with a dot of glue and started with the new strand. You also could knot the new thread onto the old one. Enjoy your God's Eye.

Crafts for the Dollhouse Family

It is appropriate for crafty dollhouse owners to have projects for their dollhouse families to work on in their spare time.  Here are three cute and easy ones.

Knitting Basket

  

We used a walnut hull as a basket, perfect for lots of yarn balls. You can use any kind of little basket or bowl. Take some embroidery floss or single-ply yarn and roll it into tiny balls. You can use dots of glue to hold it in place while you go.  After you have several balls of yarn, stick in two pins to look like knitting needles. You can leave the yarn balls loose in the bowl or glue them down so they don't get lost.

Weaving



The loom







Take some thin wooden dowel (a kebob stick works well) and cut it into small pieces so that you can make a small frame. Glue the pieces together at the corners.

Wind embroidery floss around the top and bottom edges to make your weft. Secure with glue along the top and bottoms of the loom so that the floss will not slide around when you are weaving.





Making the weft





 Thread some embridery floss onto a tapestry needle and carefully weave it in and out of the weft. I went over two strands and under two strands.  After a few rows I glued the end down in a hidden place and switched colors.










Quilting

This is a great project to use up some of those tiny fabric scraps you have saved from other projects.  This tiny quilt was all hand pieced, but could totally be done on a machine to save time.  We just picked interesting scraps, that went together, and arranged them into a dollsize quilt shape.(roughly 4 x 6", but quilts don't have to be perfect, even in the dollhouse!)  Pick a fabric for the backing, the same size, stitch 3 sides together, wrong sides facing each other, with a matching size bit of batting in the middle.

Turn it inside out and close up the open end.  Then start your quilting! Any design or pattern will do, and it's so small this can be completed easily within a day.

                                     

Now it's ready to add to some lucky doll's bed, or fold up and store for later!