I'm back! Graduated college and moved far far away, with only two suitcases and a backpack to call my own. The Journey Girl you see on the left is now my only doll. I chose a Journey Girl because they're a bit slimmer than American Girls (can use more layers in their clothing) and the plastic in their torso means that they can wear lower necklines--and she still has a squishy waist you can stick pins in! Her mouth kind of freaks me out though. The lips are cute, but too detailed compared to the rest of the face. |
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This is a (wedding?) dress for Moxie Teenz Arizona. It's basically four rectangles of fabric--silver body, silver ruffle on the bottom, lace overdress, and a silver binding to hem the lace. The silver is some sort of shiny polyester lining fabric--I think it's the scraps left over from a cloak lining. (The binding really should have been on the bias--maybe it all should have been on the bias, but I didn't have much silver fabric to work with.) The dress stays on due to a piece of elastic at the top--unfortunately, the gathering there creates an unattractive stiff pouf, so I'll need to replace the elastic with darts or some-such. I don't know what the ribbon scarf's doing. It's not attached to the dress or anything. Maybe Arizona was cold. After the dress is finished, I figure I'll measure all the parts and make it into a proper pattern to post up here. Below: the fixed ~1780's skirt and half-finished blouse. This skirt was supposed to be the lower half of a dress vaguely based on #22 (~1780's) in The Doll Book by Estelle Ansley Worrell. The skirt is made of a pale grayish cotton, with lace from who-knows-where as a ruffle on the hem and an embroidery thread drawstring. What I didn't account for was that the drawstring makes the waist much bulkier, so it's difficult to make a fitted blouse that will go over the waist and stay there. I should have made a waistband instead, and maybe darted the skirt so that there would be less fabric around the waist. I've made the blouse, except for the waistline hem, but it seems to be incompatible with the skirt. Perhaps I'll piece together a better skirt--I do have a bit of this fabric left. Alternatively, I could remove the drawstring, add some darts, and sew on a waistband to this skirt. The last time I tried a skirt with a waistband, I didn't account for fabric bulk, and it ended up more as an apron. When Eun-jae must become a rich noble woman in 1800's France, she obviously needs a proper wardrobe. This is actually based off of a wedding dress, but Eun-jae is not the sort to be interested in weddings, so I'm going to call it a "special occasion" outfit. In brown and with fewer ruffles and less embroidery, it looks less like a wedding dress to my eyes. This is a dress (or rather, a blouse and skirt) that I'm not likely to sew any time soon. It's got princess seams, a yoke, ruffly things, cuffs... I need to level up a few times before attempting this. The skirt looks okay though. Not that Eun-jae needs any more skirts. This dress would be a good opportunity to get a more... traditional wig for Eun-jae. What kind of time-traveling secret agent walks around with short purple hair all the time? Around the time of the pleated skirt's creation, I also made Eun-jae a half-circle skirt. It's some kind of teal cotton with a white floral pattern--the regularity of the pattern detracts somewhat from the circularity of the skirt, though it's a nice pattern in principle. The skirt ties in the back with a white ribbon, to match the white flowers. It's a cute, simple design from the front, and would look nice with a lacy blouse if I ever manage to make one... the poor Pullip is half naked in most of these shots. :C I'd never done pleats before this skirt, and they turned out surprisingly well. It helped that the fabric had subtle stripes already, so the pleats were guaranteed to be the right size. They're knife pleats, which are probably the easiest but have the disadvantage of asymmetry, if that's important to you. For my next pleated skirt, I will advance a level and try out box pleats. Maybe on a larger doll though, so I don't have to make teeny-tiny folds everywhere. American Girl-scale wouldn't be too hard. Worst part of making this : I pleated, and then hemmed. Why? I don't know. I guess I got so into the idea of "hey, let's do pleats!" that I forgot skirts needed hems too... This made sewing the hem quite painful. I need to remember to HEM FIRST. This top and petticoat were made a few months prior to the underclothes in the previous post. After a failed attempt at a shirt, I decided not to put any darts in the top, so it looks a bit like maternity wear. Both pieces are simple rectangles, with the skirt gathered to fit the waist. I wish the skirt were poofier. As you can see below, both petticoat and top are attached with a bead-and-loop. This works surprisingly well. If there were any clothes on top of these, though, the lumps would be visible. A button would lie flatter and look more 'real', but I didn't have any sufficiently small. |
Bly MerisaProgrammer, writer, artist. Archives
March 2016
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