Mary Poppins doll at last!

So Mary Poppins put on her white gloves and tucked her umbrella under her arm–not because it was raining but because it had such a beautiful handle that she couldn't possibly leave it at home. How could you leave your umbrella behind if it had a parrot's head for a handle? Besides, Mary Poppins was very vain and like to look her best. Indeed, she was quite sure that she never looked anything else.   --Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

I've finally finished the Mary Poppins doll. Well except for the umbrella... I'm still thinking about that. Don't worry, I do know it's important.

Of course I made a few changes, so I will show you the details. From the top, I absolutely love how her hat turned out. The pattern has a hat sewn from felt but I had the notion that I would like to make a straw hat for her.

Then one afternoon I just happened to be in a dollhouse shop in Cambridge (as part of a birthday treat day trip that included my favourite flea markets). And I found a tiny packet that had very dark navy blue miniature hat straw braid. There was only one colour, only one size and it was absolutely perfect.

So I looked it up online and sewing up a straw hat is pretty simple in the end. You can look it up yourself and find a tutorial that suits you, but the main tip, the thing I didn't know before, is that straw hat braid has a thread inside it that you can pull so that it curves.

The hat band is a tiny brown scalloped trim that was described in the dollhouse shop as "fairy lace". Now how on earth could I resist that?? Then I added some tiny white flowers I had already which I trimmed to look more like daisies.

The scarf was crocheted from pearl cotton with a tiny crochet hook. I matched the colours to the movie scarf rather than the pattern suggestions. That was a very finicky job that took a long time but as I often do I just worked on it while watching movies in the evening.

The boots are meant to be made from felt but they just turned out too bulky. So I copied the foot pattern and sewed it from black cotton fabric, hemmed the top, then embroidered the scallop edge and added the tiny black beads for buttons. The foot for this pattern has a funny shape but it's kind of charming in a way so I kept it that way.

Another little change was stitching lines to make fingers on her hands. And I decided not to bother with the mittens or stockings.

Lastly the carpet bag is meant to be made from blue fabric and embroidered. But I found the perfect little floral print at The Workroom that looks more like the carpet bag from the movie, and sewed it up from that instead.

There's a bit of wire sewn in at the top which you bend down to give it that doctor's bag shape. So charming!

So there she is.