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.

Dolly Interlude

A week or two before Costume College, I went to the St. Vincent De Paul thrift store up in Port Orchard.  Probably combining that stop with an errand to Joann Fabrics since the nearest one to me is just down the street from that particular thrift store.  And there I found, for $8, an American Girls doll.

I'd known of them before, but my interest had probably been piqued by Lady Rebecca, who posts both costuming and American Girl doll videos on YouTube.  (And I did see her a few times at CoCo... and on the Sunday she had her Kirsten doll with her, and was cosplaying to match her.)

So for $8 I bought myself a dolly.  (And I can hear my mother groaning about how I am just like my grandmother.)

I let her sit on top of the toys shelving until I got back, then lint-rollered away the dust that had been on her in the store cabinet, and set to work detangling her hair.  There are no "before" photos.  Why am I so bad at taking before photos?  And I set to researching which one she was.  Apparently her name is Nicki Fleming, one of the "modern" dolls.  Also apparently the patterns that The Pleasant Company printed and sold for the dolls back in the 1990s are available to download online.  Which I did.  Plus I also had a handful of 18" doll size patterns I'd picked up at the thrift store at some point.  So, using the "Kirsten's Pretty Clothes" pattern, I made a few things out of scraps of linen left over from Costume College sewing.

Chemise and pantaloons.

Petticoat - actually not using the pattern because I didn't realize there was one for this.  The lace I got at CoCo.

An unlined red dress, made from a remnant in the bins of fabric I hold onto and tote around for the quilt guild.  Trimmed with baby rick-rack.

And an apron to go over the dress.

After watching several Sewing with Nancy videos with Joan Hinds, about making 18" doll clothes, I decided to try lining the bodice to make several more seams enclosed, and thus cut down on the need for as much fray-check.  So then came this dress:

Which has nearly invisible growth tucks.  And, hey, Nicki now has shoes and socks!

Still, I hit one or two small snags, which did not render the dress unwearable.  But I figured out how to resolve those on the next dress, and made this outfit from a very-happy-to-fray tweed I picked up at Costume College's Bargain Basement:

And a matching hat!  I accidentally cut the skirt where it was on the fold, thus that bit pieced into the center front.  There wasn't enough fabric to cut another skirt piece out.

So I think now I've finally figured out this sewing-for-dolls thing (she says confidently, haha...), and with her mother's approval, have bought Niecelet a used Kirsten doll (her favorite of the AGs thus far) for a Christmas gift.  She'll have arrived, stained and naked, by the time we get back from England, and I'll give her and Nicki a thorough cleaning and destaining then (Nicki has a mark on her lip, and one on her leg), and make some more clothes.

Costume College, pt. 2

On Friday I wore my Roman garb, which was oh so comfy.  Having watched several of Janet Stephens' videos on Roman hairdressing, I was left with the impression that doing it properly would require a second person, which I did not have.  (I had tried the Aphrodite knot, which could be done solo, and it looked stupid on me so clearly I was not doing it correctly.)  So I winged it - did my hair into eight braids and criss-crossed them on the back of my head.  No pics; no ideas if it looked okay or not.  I did get a couple questions about what era I was dressed as - most guesses were Viking.  Alas.

Saturday I wore the beaded refashion dress, which I'll go over in another post, and on Sunday I wore this:

The shoes are from Clark's, many years ago, and are probably not quite right for the decade, but they're comfy and I already had them and they're close enough.  I made the dress following the classic "one hour dress" pattern, which is a misnomer.  Underneath, I wore this:

The linen chemise is also made using that same pattern, and the corset (because women, especially us stout ones) did not just give up their corsets in the 1920s!) I sized up and adapted from Norah Waugh's book Corsets and Crinolines.  It's a single-layer corset, more like a binder really, with spiral steel in the seams.  I got the rainbow garter clips and the back-seam nylons both from Sock Dreams.

I added a little bit of an accent on the sides to cover the gathers.  And to make that navy blue neck tie look less out of place.

And some almost invisible details... there's three tucks on each sleeve because I thought that would be fun.  Not sure if you can tell in any of these pictures, but there are threads of silver (probably mylar?) running through the otherwise 100% linen of the dress, adding just a little sparkle.

And on the inside of those gathers shown up above, I wrapped a strip of bias tape around the exposed raw edge.  Because linen does like to fray!  And I finished each seam edge with rayon seam binding.  Because what use is it, making a dress, only to have it fray to uselessness after five or ten washes?

Costume College 2024, Pt. 1

I am home from Costume College, which was, as always, a wonderful weekend!  I flew down Thursday afternoon since CoCo starts promptly at 9am Friday morning.  The flight was blessedly uneventful; I did not get caught up in the security break that affected lots of computers and cancelled flights.  But I did, alas, discover that the Chipotle at SeaTac has unfortunately closed. :(  I read Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone on the plane, found the shuttle to the hotel with ease, and checked into my room at the LAX Sheraton Gateway.  I didn't have a roommate this year - by the time I stopped waffling and decided to commit, there was no one left looking for one.  On one hand, not having to worry about modesty or snoring or late night comings and goings of a roomie was nice... on the other hand, it was pricey.  Ah well, it's a once a year splurge!

The hotel in general was pretty good once I'd internalized the layout.  I ended up in room 667... and was vastly amused that there was in fact a room 666 right across the hallway from me.  I'd half thought the hotel would skip that number out of superstition!  My hotel room was nice and clean, but my god the Sheraton really needs to replace the hallway carpets.  From overheard conversation, they really needed to replace them a year ago too, but... haven't.

Every year CoCo gives out tote bags to the attendees as well as a pen and notebook and the usual program and schedule and such stuff.  This year the tote bag was made of canvas (nice!) and there was a table set up near registration with a ton of Sharpies in lots of colors on it, so everyone could personalize their bag.  I really really hope this repeats in the future; it was a great idea, and makes it less likely that someone might grab the wrong bag and not realize it.

I met up with my friend Brittany and did go to the Thursday night pool party in my 1960s stunt dress.  That was the only one of the major social gatherings I attended - I skipped the Friday night social and the Saturday night gala.  I don't cope well with large crowds; I'm bad at socializing and even if I'm with friends, there's sufficient noise that I cannot pick out their voices and converse.

I love the classes, though!  I'll go over those tomorrow, but for now, here's one of the things I made.  From the 1920s Garden Party Hat class:

Surfacing For Air

Between the boys being on summer vacation and me working on outfits for Costume College (t-minus one week) I haven't been posting.  My apologies!  But I've finally finished the first of my three outfits: Roman matron's garb.

The base layer is an Ionic chiton, best explained by this image: 

It's hand-sewn out of some linen I bought from Fabric Mart that turned out to be a striped sage green rather than the striped deep emerald my monitor showed it as.  The outer layer is a stola, which indicated a married woman, made out of some 100% linen from my stash.  I got it about a decade ago at a Joanns that was closing, for the bargain price of $1.69/yard!  The stola was also entirely handsewn, and really the only difference is that it has two buttons at the shoulders instead of eight.  If I wanted to change up the look, I could switch the buttons on the two.

And the cording is lucet cord made out of crochet cotton.  I'd started it many many years ago and finally finished the length of cotton in time for this project.  Not the most glamorous outfit, but it's certainly comfy!

Now, to finish the last 10% each of the other two outfits...