I'm a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie World...

So I went out into the garage and checked the box that said it had dolls in it.  And it did, indeed, have my two Barbie doll cases from the 1980s!  So I brought them into the house and looked to see what I had.  Current count, including the newbies, is seven Barbies (including the Black one and the Curvy one), one Ken, one Lea, one Courtney, and... two Skippers.

Skipper on the left is Great Shape Skipper, dating from 1984 or so.  Skipper on the right, my $.50 thrift store find, is Sun Sensation Skipper, from 1991.  Quite a difference.  I guess we know when Barbie's little sister hit puberty!

I have also discovered that combing freshly detangled Barbie hair is oddly hypnotic.  Last night I did a salon session for the Curvy and Black Barbies, so they have lovely smooth hair now.  I also watched a few tutorials this morning on how to curl Barbie hair, and they gave me ideas.  Just saying.

I have also (for now) finished my sewing for Curvy.  She has two (and a half) outfits.  Time to move on to the next victim doll.

This rose fabric was on the discard table at the quilt guild because it was ugly or something.  I think it makes a perfect Barbie dress.

 

The skirt went better with the blouse in my head than on paper. I really should make a different skirt to go with the blouse.  Which is okay, because!

The skirt will also work as a shorter dress.

Heat Wave

Ugh.  This is one of those weeks where we open the doors and windows late at night and early in the morning, and shut up the house during the rest of the day, hiding from the heat.  The fans are on, and the lightly-clad individuals are miserable.  Or maybe it's just me.

Ironically, if I was at Costume College right now... the temperatures are slightly lower in Woodland Hills, California than they are in Gig Harbor, Washington.  Ah well.  Que sera sera.

So.  Picnic Quilt #2 still sits on my sewing table, a bit over half quilted.  Eight more basket blocks to go!  But I've not been feeling it in this heat.  (Was it just earlier this month that I told Wonderful Husband that I was amazed that I was quilting during the summer, because in California it would have been Too Hot?  Clearly I jinxed myself.)

So what have I been up to?  Well, yesterday I took Squiddle and Jazzy to see Kung Fu Panda at the cinema.  During the summer, the local theater runs a different cartoon movie each week for $2/ticket.  And we've gone to the splash pad once.  Today's plans involve the library, the tiny thrift store next to it, and one item to pick up from the Food Market next to that.

Speaking of thrift stores!  Last week I found this at Goodwill:

It was $3.  And it may not look like much in the above, but take a closer look at some of the fabrics:

I think it's possible this quilt top is over a hundred years old.  Unfortunately, no one at my main guild is really into vintage/antique fabrics, so when I took it in for show-and-tell, I wasn't able to get a consensus.  Still, it's awesome and it has me jazzed!

Guild was actually kind of funny (to me) this week, because the activity was fabric sorting, in prep for the October Sewing Room Sale.  "Get rid of anything that's old or ugly" was the goal.

And I?  I am a scrap quilter.  I have no judgment of what's "ugly".  One of the other members held up a piece of fabric and lamented how horrible it was.  I looked at it and LOVED the color combination and William Morris-esque design!  I was as useful as a lead balloon.  (Well, not really.  I ran fabrics to various themed tables, and put together bundles, and helped unpack and repack the tubs.)  At the end of things, we were all told we could take what we wanted off the discards table.  And I picked out a few things, including several yards of green silk charmeuse!  In the end, there were three big totes worth of stuff to be donated.

One of the pieces I snagged was what turned out to be a fat quarter of this:

Which is on its way to becoming a Barbie dress. Because while going to thrift stores, I have picked up a quartet of $.50 Barbies.  Two are Skipper and Courtney from the 1990s, both in fabulous (if nude) condition.  The Courtney has an amazing lot of hair!  I thought they might be a good gift for Niecelet, but apparently she is not a doll girl. :(  So they're for me, I guess.  I also found one of the modern "curvy" Barbies that has a more realistic figure, and a Black Barbie, which I know I don't have any of.  (My dolls from the 1980s are in the trunk in the garage; I should dig them out.)  So after removing the blue marker swimsuit from Curvy (using a scrubby and dishsoap for most of it, and a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol for the last 10%), I'm making her a dress using this pattern.  Currently I'm overcasting the edges of the dress by hand; I'm thinking the next time I'm near a Joann's, I need to pick up a bottle of fray check, because that will be much faster....

On The Sewing Table This Morning

Yesterday evening it rained, breaking the humidity that had grown oppressive.  And we're only in the mid-70s for highs here!  I have trouble imagining how it must feel in parts of the world where it's hot and humid.

But since nothing was lacking but the will, as the saying goes, I finally sat down and started quilting the next picnic quilt:

I got this quilt top (and another probably by the same maker, which will also become a picnic quilt) sometime in the 2014-2019 time range in a thrift store in Anaheim, CA.  The sashing is from the 1960s (there are spots where you can read the selvage info, which includes a 1961-62 date), but the blocks are hand-sewn and, I feel, probably from the 1950s.  The sashing is... not terribly well measured, so the blocks puff up a bit.  The sashing also wobbles back and forth, which finally dissuaded me from quilting cables into it.  Instead, I did straight-line stitching down each side of the sashing and saved the free-motion stuff for the twenty quilt blocks.  It's mostly point-to-point arcs inside the triangles and the white square at the top of the basket, but I did decide to go with pebbling for the side rectangles, to try to eat up some of that excess fabric.  One and a half baskets done out of the twenty, but I'm not going to stitch more until after the boys wake up.

And all the time I was quilting last night, I thought to myself that I was never able to do quilting in the summer in Anaheim, because it was just too hot....