Doll-A-Day 2023 #349: An Amazing Hand Made Gift! Pee Wee Herman

Yesterday I promised that today you would see one of my Christmas gifts. Here he is. It's Pee Wee Herman.

  What's so amazing about that, you say? Well the amazing thing is that my sister made this guy!

No kidding! She made him from scratch! It all started back in May, when I sent her this picture of a knitted Pee Wee doll.

I said, "Make me one.", because she can crochet. She says she doesn't knit, but whatever. My sister can do anything she tries to do, and is good at all of it. When we were kids she was always making me something. I still have most of the stuff she made for me. One thing I really wish I still had was a Barbie sized quilt sleeping bag thing that she made out of paper towels. It was a few layers of paper towels, with another layer or two masking taped around the edges, and the top layers were 'quilted' using markers. There were loads of squares, all with different pictures/decorations on them, to make it look like a quilt. It was one of my favourite things, and it disappeared over the years. Mom probably threw it away. 

  So, she got the idea to make me a cloth Pee Wee, because she doesn't think she can crochet that well either. That's okay. I like cloth dolls better anyway. She did it all in secret. I had no idea what she was making, although I did know the last couple of months that she was making me a Christmas present. Yes. She worked on it for months. She was constantly redoing various parts. It took her a while to find some of the fabrics. Things like that. She only finished a day or two before Christmas.

  She started out by drawing the pattern.

She tried a couple of face designs.

This is how he looked when she settled on a face and got it sewn together, but hadn't stuffed the head yet.

Then she stuffed him and finished drawing his face.

She made a mock up suit or two using random fabric she had.

And finally she made the actual suit.

I think she did a pretty great job on the whole thing. I would have been scared to death to draw and colour the face on after I had worked so hard putting the whole thing together. If you screw it up at that point, all that hard work was for nothing. But I guess the head at least has to be stuffed when you paint it to know where everything is going to lay when it's stuffed.

The suit fabric is perfect. She said she thought she was going to have to juts make it grey. At the last minute she walked into a Goodwill and spotted a pair of Levi's ladies capri pants. They were exactly what she needed.

She apologized for his bow tie 'only' being 'a clip on'.

She says the metal part is from an earring.

She sewed him a white shirt, and found some tiny buttons.

She used the corners of a real handkerchief  to make his hankie.

His shirt has snaps. The buttons are just for show.

  As they do with Ken doll clothes, his shirt is sleeveless, to make his coat slide on easier and the sleeves look less bulky.

  She even lined his coat!

And she bothered to put vents in his shirt!

  His pants have a real fly, that closes with a snap.

  Like the jacket fabric, she said she had no idea what she was going to make his shoes out of, when at the last minute she found the perfect thing. She thought she was going to have to make them out of felt.

She even made the little tassels!

She had to make him some socks from some cut down baby doll socks.

His hands have sewn in flingers.

He also has stitched in jointing. He's jointed at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, and knees. He can sit down.

He can bend at the wrists.

His elbows bend.

You can see the jointing below.

Gee. Pee Wee is more buff than you would think.

Pretty cool, huh? But she didn't stop there. Actually, she gave me two packages, and the one she gave me fist contained this:

Nice, I thought. Maybe Mr. World can wear the pajamas. I don't really see him in the pink robe though. And I'll have to find somebody else to wear the cute bunny slippers. They were my favourite part though!

  Then she had me open Pee Wee and all was explained.

She said she tried to find fabric with wienie dogs on it, like his pajamas, but she had to settle for dogs in general.    I didn't remember the wienie dog pajamas. 

Apparently it was from an episode of the Playhouse, where Pee Wee has a pajama party.

Notice the red piping on the collar and cuffs.

The robe has blanket stitching around the collar and pockets. 

She wasn't satisfied with the size of the print, but the colours are right.

  She also included a little gingerbread man on her gift tag. She said she was originally intending to put it in his pocket, so I did.

  He looks so warm and cozy.

  The bunny slippers are great. On the show he wore slippers that looked like houses, but he wore bunny slippers in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure".

 As hard as bunny slippers were, the houses might have been even harder.

  Pee Wee is 16 inches tall. To give you an idea of scale, here he is having a pajama party with Tammy World.

  I think she did an amazing on on him, and I appreciate it so much. I think she thinks I don't think much of him, but I do. And everybody else thought he was really something too.

  Catch up starts tomorrow, so be prepared to be bombarded with posts. I didn't want to do more than one post today, because I didn't want Pee Wee to get lost in the shuffle. He's too special for that.