Two Projects

In an effort to tame my stack of "washed, ready to be made into projects" fabrics, I pulled out a couple to start with something easy: yet another skirt for Josefina.

These two cotton fabrics came from the treasure table at the Gig Harbor Quilt Guild two months ago.  (I had a dental appointment that conflicted with last month's meeting.)  There was just enough of the darker blue once I straightened it to account for the stripes.  I have a bit more left of the lighter blue.  Together, they remind me of sea glass, which is a pleasing combination.  Her linen camisa was made by me some months ago; her sash is from her Meet outfit, which I am slowly piecemealing together.

I'm using my doll sewing to finally get used to my serger.  I will admit it makes seam finishes so easy!  But for anything which really needs pinning, I'm still sewing the main seam on my Singer then going over it again with the serger, which seems... redundant.  But I still feel more confident that way.  I can't pull out the pins at the last second or sew over them on the serger!  (Plus taking out the seam, if I need to, is a much bigger PITA.)

Project number two is a bit trickier!  A few months ago, I saw this picture on the American Girl Reddit forum I lurk on:

I initially thought the image on the right must be a screencap from a 1980s/1990s TV show, possibly Full House or the like.  But I thrifted Courtney's first book the other week, and apparently it's art from that!  So this is a canon dress for her that American Girl has just... never made.  Ever since I saw the picture, I've been on the hunt for the fabric on the left, as it's a quilting cotton I've seen any number of times over the years.  And a piece of it finally turned up for me at the guild's storage destashing thing a few weeks ago.  But as I only have a limited amount of it, I wanted to get the pattern down before cutting into it.  So I pulled one of the other appropriate 1980s fabrics and set to Frankensteining a pattern.  Mostly I used the blouse from the Molly's Pretty Clothes as this dress is so very 1980s mashup: 1940s sleeves and collar paired with a 1920s dropped waist, etc.  I shortened the sleeves and lengthened the body and added a skirt twice the width of the body, and this is the first draft iteration:

It's not horrible, but it's not just right either.  I need to raise the waistline back up a little and lengthen the skirt accordingly, narrow and reshape the collar, and narrow the sleeves.  And possibly make them a hair shorter!  But the scrunchie turned out well on first try, at least - 3"x11.5" with 4.5" of elastic inside, overlapped by .25".  I have enough of this fabric to do another iteration, possibly two, of the dress.  In the meantime, even though it's not exactly what I wanted, this is a well-made and serviceable garment, and I shall give it and the matching scrunchie to my neighbor girl Violet, who is also into dolls and will be moving away this weekend. 😢

Either before or after I get this pattern working, my next project will be the long-delayed purse I am making my mother for her Mother's Day gift.  But my Uncle Giant's memorial service is this weekend, so I think it's perhaps understandable that I've been sewing on something other than what I should be.  Avoidance tactics are sometimes key to survival, on so many levels.

Fake It

Having a love/hate relationship (as so many do) with American Girl prices, whether brand new or on the secondhand market, I decided to take a stab at sewing Kirsten's birthday dress from her Pretty Clothes pattern.  I had a fat quarter of pink gingham on hand, which wasn't quite wide enough, so I had to piece the skirt, and the whole thing went on hold for a while until I was able to find some 1/8" white ribbon for the sleeve bows, since I was never going to find cording the right size...

But overall, I think it turned out pretty cute!  Even if I did have to hand-sew the baby rick-rack on the sleeves.  In a bit, I might try making another iteration of the dress, since I now** have some yardage of that dusty pink that was popular in the late '80s (when this doll first came out) and I think that might match the ribbon on her flower crown a little better.  (The flower crown was purchased from a Chinese "gray market" eBay seller, and is manufacturer's overstock from when AG rereleased this outfit last year.)  And the apron I sewed some months ago, when I was first starting to sew doll clothing.

**Last weekend I helped one of my quilt guilds do a cleanup of our storage units, preparing to combine the guild's two units into one before the facility hikes prices later this year.  A lot of dated fabric that no one wanted got donated to Value Village.  I got to rummage through it all first and pulled out some pieces that I thought would be good for doll clothes etc. ^_^  Win-win - more space for the guild, and some fabric that I'm excited to play with for me.

Second Verse

Browsing through recently-acquired quilting fabrics, one in particular caught my eye.  It came from the thrift store and is backing-width (108"), so... I don't know exactly how much of it I got, but "plenty" is a fair descriptor.  Glancing at it, I decided I wanted to make another 1952 Wrap Dress, this one for a different dolly.  I dug through my packets of bias binding (I have so many...), found a match, and set to.  Then I cleaned up the doll in question.  I now know how to remove human nail polish from American Girl dolls!

Evette's hair is notoriously difficult to manage, and clearly has had a brush run through it many times by a previous owner.  So I still need to wash, section, and twist the strands back into their curls, but that is a project for Future Me.  Her wig is also very thick... I had no trouble getting the headband onto Blaire, but had to fight to get this one on Evette!  The mini squishmallow is from a McDonald's Happy Meal, and is named Maritza... which is one of Evette's best friends.  So I decided it was clearly meant to be her plushie, and shamelessly stole it from my kids.  I don't think they've even noticed.

Today I am stitching two more of the dresses from the same material as Blaire's, but with different bias tape.  Once I have them (and the matching bloomers and headbands) done, I might offer them up for sale on the AG Discord I'm on.  At then some point I'll move on to sewing a different pattern.

Cheshire Smile

I never took ballet.  Never, so far as I can recall with my admittedly poor memory, wanted to.  My sister, however, did.  She did ballet for several years when we were younger, and now that she has a daughter, has enrolled Niecelet in ballet classes (and jazz and tap and who knows what else) and started taking classes again herself at the same studio.

(Squiddle and Jazzy, meanwhile, take swimming classes.  They're now up to levels 4 and 5 respectively!  The YMCA, for reference, only goes up to level 6.  And Squiddle is now taking social dance lessons as well.)

For her part of their recital this coming weekend, my sister wanted to be the Cheshire Cat.  So she asked me to make her skirt, bought the tulle and elastic, and I set to.  I will admit there were a few tears and feelings of intense frustration because this was a lot of layers to sew and my workhorse cast iron Singer machine was not happy with it.  I had to change from the black quilting thread I started with to purple silk thread, because the thread kept breaking!  But in the end my perseverance paid off and she got her skirt.

Pattern Review: 1952 Wrap Dress for 18" dolls

Been trying to write, been trying to sew, been trying to garden.  The usual.  I have completed a few projects: another couple Regency gowns for American Girl dolls (gave one to Neighbor Girl, who will be moving away soon; sad), Kirsten's Birthday Dress from the AG set of patterns, a couple AG-sized quilts from my bag of 1.5" squares (gave one to a new acquaintance who lives in the same town as me).

Yesterday I decided to try a new pattern, the 1952 Wrap Dress by Parkers Quilt Shop.  It's a replica pattern of Maryellen's Strawberry Outfit.  It took me about four hours, including faffing about on the internet and taking a lunch break, to produce this:

The pattern notes that getting the bias to go smoothly around the tight curve of the tabs is tricky, and that's definitely correct.  Next time, I might try ironing it around a quarter or something to get it to lie smooth.  And between the dress and the headband, this pattern takes 4 2/3 yards of bias tape... I started with an unopened five yard packet, and have only thirteen inches left!  My only other caveat is that I'm not keen on the way the elastic is attached to the (unseen in the above pic) bloomers, so I've cut out another iteration of the pattern with enough extra seam allowance added to make actual casings.  But other than that, this is a solid pattern, well-written and the pieces all fit together nicely.  Recommended pattern.

Patching the Patches

Jazzy has taken to burrowing in my and Wonderful Husband's bed, making a cave for himself out of our duvet.  I finally asked him what was wrong with his bed, and he told me he liked how big the duvet was.  So I offered him one of my quilts - the big one I usually use when I'm not feeling well.  It's got a flannel backing so it's cozy and the front is a quilt top I probably got out of a box lot at some point.  It's not a pretty quilt, which is why I made something out of it that I won't worry about if someone throws up on it.

Jazzy accepted, and has happily been sleeping under the quilt for several days now.  Upside down because he doesn't like flannel against his skin!  So I decided I'd probably better get around to patching the splits, mostly on seam allowances, where the maker of the quilt top clearly hadn't stuck to a quarter inch seam allowance.

I spent a couple pleasant hours this afternoon with needle, thread, and my scrap bag, mending. ^_^

I also made proto-sauerkraut yesterday:

I like using red cabbage sometimes because the sauerkraut ends up hot pink, which is fun.

Oh, and we went out this afternoon to play Pokemon Go for a while, then went to dinner at Chipotle.  We were wondering why the parking lot (and the restaurant) were so deserted.  We were the only ones there.  Then I twigged that the staff were clustered around a tablet behind the counter, watching the Superb Owl halftime show.  Question answered! ^_^

Down a Rabbit Hole

My doll collection may have grown a wee bit since August.  Into a new hobby.

But look, here's Kirsten!

At Costume College I picked up someone's rejected dress bodice, which had this light blue silk as one of its two fabrics.  After picking it apart, washing the pieces, and ironing them, I turned most of the one fabric into this Regency dress, altering one of the patterns from Josefina's Pretty Clothes.  The white and blue trims are silk ribbons; I happened into a lot of them at a thrift store a few months back.  For this dress, I just wrapped the ribbons around a line of straight stitches done with a long stitch length.  The lace is from... somewhere?  Maybe CoCo some years back, maybe a thrift store.  The gulf of time separates me from sure knowledge.