The princess and the pea

This project may have not made any sense to anyone else than me when I would  first talk about it. "Sure, Tintti. That sounds great," everyone would say with a dubious look. But, I had an idea, and I am super excited that I can finally share it with you.

You may wonder how an earth did I even get this idea. Well, here is the story...

This past summer Olivia, Matilda and I went into a beautiful local children's book store. The store has many beautiful things, and one of them was a pretty blue box with drawn windows and door knobs on the outside. Once you opened the doors, inside was a bedroom of a pretty little bunny princess who was sleeping on top of multiple flower mattresses. Underneath one of her mattresses was a pea. SUPER CUTE!!  It was on top of one of store's bookshelves that had different versions of The Princess and The Pea books. The Princess and the pea set was fun, cute, fancy ... and expensive. We stayed at the store for a bit, and I kept walking over to the bunny princess three or four times. I fell in love with it. I almost bought it. I really really wanted it. It was so cute. However, my practical side kicked in, and I did not buy it. But, before I left the store, I sneakily took a picture of it. And, decided to make one myself. Really? How hard could it be?

The picture stayed in my phone for quite a few months while I was creating and thinking and rethinking my plan. I knew I wanted to make it, but I wasn't quite sure how I would do it or where I would start. I needed a princess which meant I needed to sew one. I needed mattresses. I needed a pea (the easiest part of the project). And, I needed a bed.

Sometime in the fall, I found a magazine with pattern for a doll. Once I saw the pattern, I knew I would use it to make my princess.I added the felt crown with beads to make her look more princessy.

 

The princess looks happy in this picture, but after she was finished, she sat for weeks on my sewing table because I had read the instructions wrong, and I did not make her face at the right time. So, there she was on the table all pretty without a face. I finally one day decided that I needed to continue with the project, so I took a pencil and green and red bottles of acrylic paint, and I drew her a face using the paint. She looked happy, and I was happy she finally had a face. (I don't have any idea what will happen to her face if I wash her, but I will deal with that then. A friend mentioned I should have used fabric markers...of course! Next time then.)

Next. The bed. Well...the plan was to make a beautiful bed from wood like the original. However, since I am not one to build things out of wood, and my husband is very busy, I needed another idea. So, one day, the girls and I are sitting around the kitchen table eating our snack when I noticed the cardboard box on the floor. It was the box that the milk was in from Costco. It looked like it was about the size of the princess. Would it be possible that the princess could fit into the box? I ran upstairs while my daughters looked at me in concern...äiti has gone mad ... and I returned with the princess. I opened the box and popped the doll inside. She fit! Not perfectly, but it was close enough. YAY!! I had a bed!

I cut holes to the long sides of the box so that the mattresses would show. It was perfect. 

Next, Olivia and I painted the box white. Olivia loves to paint. She'll paint anything, so painting a cardboard box was perfect task for her.

To cover all the brown, we painted the box twice inside and outside. Once the white paint was all dried up, Olivia decorated the bed with painted pink sparkly dots.

OK. I had a princess who had a bed, but the whole reason why I wanted to make this was the mattresses. So, I started sewing mattresses for her. I went through my stash of fabrics and found the most colorful pieces of fabric I could find. It wasn't too hard to do. I sewed two pieces of batting in the middle to make the mattresses thicker. Once I had made 12 of them, I started to feel desperate. This was going to take a looooooooong time to finish. Sigh! Luckily another friend of mine offered to give me her leftover foam, so I could make some thicker mattresses. Oh my what a difference that made!!

The bed has 3 thick mattresses and 21 thinner mattresses.

I am really happy how well the mattresses turned out. They are so pretty, too.

I figured the princess needed a blanket, so I made one with lace around the edges.

She looks pretty happy in her new bed...even if her legs don't quite fit inside. :)

The last part of the project was the pea. It was the easiest and fastest part of the project. I crocheted the pea and decided to add a crochet string to it so that I could attach the pea to one of the mattresses. I also made the pea humongous. I had two reasons for a huge attached pea: a) I did not want it to get lost all the time and b) I did not want my 9-month-old to be choking on it.

And, that was it. It only took me 6 months to complete this whole crazy project. I am SO happy I did. Olivia has not played with it yet, but I don't really care. I had SO much fun creating it.