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.