2012
How You Can Help
June 2012


“How You Can Help,” Friend, June 2012, 26

How You Can Help

  • When you pay your tithing, you can also include a donation to the Humanitarian Aid Fund.

  • Make and donate items for orphanages, homeless shelters, and disaster areas. You could make a quilt or collect school supplies for children in need. Or use this pattern to make a comforting doll for a child in a hospital or shelter.

Comfort Doll

Have an adult help you and do your best work!

You will need:

  • 10-inch square of flannel

  • 3- x 4-inch piece of cardboard

  • 3¾-inch circle of muslin or soft knit fabric

  • 3-inch piece of gathered lace

  • stuffing or quilt batting

  • needle and thread

  • fabric pen

  • yarn

  • knitting needle

  • pinking shears

Image
doll instructions

Illustrations by Val Chadwick Bagley

  1. To make the doll’s blanket: Fold the flannel in half into a triangle. Trim the unfolded edges with pinking shears. Fold the triangle in half again, and press the crease with your fingers to mark the center of the triangle. Place the triangle on the table with the folded side at the bottom and the peak at the top.

  2. To make the doll’s body: Place the piece of cardboard in the middle of the triangle, with the narrow side of the cardboard even with the folded edge of the fabric. Use a pencil to mark the rectangle shape where the cardboard is. Remove the cardboard, and use a needle and thread to stitch along the long sides of the rectangle. In between the layers of fabric, stuff the rectangle with stuffing or batting. Put the layers back together and stitch along the top of the rectangle.

  3. To make the doll’s head: Sew around the edge of the circle of fabric with long stitches. Draw the thread up to form a head, and stuff it with batting. Place the head on the fabric above the body and stitch it down. Sew lace between head and body. Draw eyes and a smile on the head.

  4. To make the doll’s hair: Wrap a long piece of yarn around the knitting needle. Put it in a warm oven for 10 minutes. Cool completely and then cut the yarn into two-inch-long pieces and sew onto the doll’s head.