With this everything-you-need kit, your child's friends and cousins can have hours of fun dressing up their own dolls — an activity their parents will be grateful for when the postholiday blues set in.

Half the fun in giving this gift is selecting all the different trimmings at a fabric or discount store before packing everything prettily in a little plastic "suitcase." The more kits you make, the easier and less expensive each one will be; buy a bag or two of baubles, a sack of pipe cleaners, and a yard each of a couple different trimmings and fabrics, then divide them among several kits.

Materials

• Lunch-box-style box (we bought a plastic one from A.C. Moore)
• 1 dozen old-fashioned wooden clothespins
• Glue stick, bottle of tacky glue, or low-temperature glue gun
• Scissors
• Pipe cleaners (for arms and adornment)

• A couple of skeins of embroidery floss (for hair)
• Small pieces of beautiful fabric, tied with ribbon into little bundles
• Wide eyelet ruffle trim (this makes excellent skirts)
• Rolled lengths of wide satin ribbon
• Feathers, buttons, beads, gemstones, small silk flowers, and other gorgeous little things

Instructions

1. In a lunch-box-style box arrange the other items.

2. Have your child make a sample clothespin doll to include in the kit or to attach with a ribbon to a colorful card that hangs on the outside that reads "A dozen dolls-to-be. We belong to ________."

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• November 2002