It's holiday time!

It's almost Christmas and today is my last day before heading off for my holidays until the new year. This is a small line drawing of some of the characters that I've made including Little Errol and Squeaky Beryl on the right, George and Enid in the middle and Dancing Ernie on the left, who is usually quite hard to draw because he never stands still.

Oki-ni Sleeping Babies

Last year, I was lucky enough to be invited to design and make an exclusive range for the fashion brand collaboration company oki-ni. Each character came with a tiny sewn brooch - here it's an extra titchy baby, some of the others had bright red heart brooches with messages of love stitched across them like sewn tattoos. I have kept one of each for myself. These were the very first embroidered sleeping babies I made.
"oki-ni has commissioned Lucy Jane Batchelor to create twenty magical hand-made characters for Christmas 2006. Each piece comes attached to its own winter wonderland scene with an oki-ni tag appliquéd to their posterior; we promise this wasn’t painful in any way! You are urged to personalise them, accessorise them and repair them when they wear thin to create a loyal, lifelong companion."
They had some great press and will have been in their new homes for a year now.

Squeaky Beryl

It's been a very long time since I made any Squeaky Beryls, but last week I made a couple as a very special order and one for me to keep, these are extra cuddly Beryls as they are made from the softest cashmere given to me by Jo Sheffield of Bubsie. She has a super squeaky squeak in her tummy, lovely old mother of pearl button eyes and an American vintage sewing print skirt.

Knitted Keep & Share Sleeping Babies

I made these funny families of babies for Amy at Keep & Share from her offcuts and samples. I also made a few other one-offs; there was Ralph and Harold the twins and their big mummy Agnes. Most of them have been sold now, just a couple of the little babies still available on the Keep and Share site in the off-cuts section.
This is Ralph and Harold - or is it the other way around? I'm not too sure, only Agnes can tell them apart.

A Nice Holiday for the Sleeping Babies

These six tweed sleeping babies have just returned from a very exciting holiday. They've been to a photo shoot for Elle Deco, such glamorous little things. They'll be in the February 2008 issue, I can't wait to see how they looked with good lighting and a bit of make-up (?)!

Woolen Blanket Babies

They're much bigger than the usual sleeping babies - Last Christmas I made a huge one as a mummy to all of the babies, she was from a cotton and wool tapestry cushion cover and was covered in a floral pattern. The initialed pair are from a beautiful wool blanket (sewn in 1939) and have cream leather ears, the other two are stitched with pompoms around their hoods to keep them warm and snuggly! I get their leather ears from the leather sewers by Brick Lane- they give me bags or scraps to reuse, all sorts of lovely colours.

Little knitted sleeping babies

This little knitted sleeping baby is off to a new home today, and as he is the last of these that I had made, I thought I'd like to keep a record of him. In his package he has some mending threads, some bird stickers and a woven tape which reads 'Me and my friend'.