Bobby Suit

Not much to say here I'm afraid. It's a 40's style bobby suit adapted from a Bleuette pattern and made from a striped fat quarter. I think I like the concept of the suit more than the result. It's not bad, but not as exciting to look at as other things I've done.

 Silly picture with a better angle.

Cheery Holiday Photo

Please enjoy the end of year festivities.

Bustle Action

This is embarrassingly one of those outfits that took years to complete. My attention span was all over the place, and I lost a lot of interest after it was about 80% assembled.

The inspiration was from Kendra Van Cleave's take on a dress from Patterns of Fashion 1. The elaborately ruched skirt front was my main motivation to make the outfit, and I had an iridescent taffeta that would show off the gathering nicely. Another motivation for the outfit was to make a bustle top that I tried to make once before from an old Peterson's magazine, but I misread the pattern, and it turned out differently. Nice, but not what I initially wanted.

From time to time I would get motivated and attach a collar, set in sleeves, or a hook and eye, but for the most part it sat in my "to be completed" pile. A doll meet finally motivated me to finish, so I put in the snaps, and here we are.

Pictures ahoy!

Fully Knitted

Here is a pair of separates that I made at different times. The top is of an improvised pattern I made, using a mock cable stitch from Knitting on the Edge. The sweater was going to be part of a Silent Hill cosplay if Cheryl, but I still haven't gotten around to making the jumper.

The skirt is a mock pleated affair with the pattern taken from The Bleu Door. I rather like the yarn I used, and it has appeared in several projects.

Red and white with ribbon

When I saw this apron pattern on http://www.thesewingacademy.com/, I knew it would make an excellent jumper for a Tiny. I still have a lot of ribbon print material after I made this shalwar kameez, so I used some and put together a coordinating red shirt from what used to be a shoe bag. This dress looks terrible without a a discernable waist, but that is nothing a generous sized bit of red ribbon can't fix.

Cultural Fusion

This is a variant on my idea of shalwar kameez lolita. As far as I can tell, no kameez is ever made as a wrap front, but the top was already there from an abandoned project, and I made use of it. The sleeves are built in, and there are ribbons that ties in the back. I used two layers of lace at the neckline to add a sense of richness.

The shalwar are basic sloper pants with pintucks and lace to add to the fluffy theme, and the dupatta is made from several lengths of insertion and edging lace whip stitched together.

 Here is a detail of the shalwar. I like the look of the lace peeking out from the pintucks.

 And a view of the bow in the back, a better look at the dupatta:

Not So Spooky

I was in a low key swap for Halloween. There was a low maximum price for the finished products to be sent out, so I decided to make one quality piece instead of several cruddy ones.

 

My swap partner didn't want anything gory or frightening, so I made this skirt. There was just enough orange to make the pockets and waistband, and I think the overall effect is simple but cute.

My little bonus piece was a headband made from yet another clipped bangle, with a rosette stitched to a black bow. The tube top is not part of the swap, but to protect Linnea's modesty as I took these pictures.

Ten People, Ten Colors

This is the other outfit I made for my Dark Circus swap partner. Alas, she did not care for the dress.

For this outfit, she wanted a long dress topped with a corset. Once again, I used the spider print, and instead of bands of white fabric as she shown in a sketch, I used some lace I had on hand. For the top of the dress, I used a very simple pattern with built in sleeves. I then realized I miscalculated and made the sleeves too narrow for the arms, so I pieced in material to the shoulders. the vast majority of the dress is hand stitched, and the raw edges overcast with a buttonhole stitch.

The corset too is mostly hand sewn. instead of boning, as resin dolls don't squish, I used pintucks in contrasting fabric to simulate boning. For the lacing, I used thread bars.

The headdress is made from a bangle clipped to be a headband, and beads glued on.

Though she liked the corset, she thought the bodice should have been lined, and the edges machine finished rather than by hand, and that all the raw edges should be concealed.Using felled or French seams would have eaten up too much seam allowance, and lining on this scale would have been too bulky for my liking. She also didn't care for the handsewn portion of the trousers of the other outfit. I am a firm believer that some things are best hand stitched, where I have more control, than trusted to a sometimes mercurial machine.

The back of the bodice is also apparently uneven, which I find credible, and something I would easily miss, as details like that don't bug me.

As the title says, some people have different tastes.

Stonking Great Doll

One swap I recently finished had a Dark Circus theme. I was assigned to one partner with two dolls, one of which is a 70cm boy. My partner wanted clothes themed on The Night Circus, and had sketches of what she would like. For her boy, she wanted a suit, hat, and shirt. Black, and white are to be the main colors, with a splotch of red. The odd crazy print is welcome.

I made the hat reversible, and the hat along with the shirt are made from a spider web print fabric. Instead of a red necktie, I used a red print of no particular pattern for the lapels without a corresponding collar. for the suit, I took inspiration from The Victorian Tailor. This is also my first time making pants with a built in facing rather than a waistband.

Here is Linnea modeling the upper clothes.

The pants are the height of most of my girls, 45cm.

With apologies to Demode...

The outfit here was inspired my the skirt of this ensemble. As it so happens, the pattern for the skirt comes from a book in have, so I went to Patterns of Fashion and copied the elaborate gathered front, which I mounted to a plain back for stability. Instead of trying to create the elaborate folded trim in 1:4 scale, I went for box pleats.

The top was inspired by the pattern of this outfit. Largely, I wanted an overskirt that was huge and poofy enough to be its own bustle. This turned out to be just as well, as the skirt was too narrow for the bustle petticoat to fit. To match the skirt, the top also has a pleated trim.

Annoyingly, the skirt front isn't too visible when Anthea's standing, but as she sits most of the time, you get to see the details. 

More pictures below.

A Long Awaiting Project

Way back when, I cut out a 1920s French idea of a kimono with some vague ideas as to how it will turn out. It eventually gained a complimenting pair of trousers, and a bit of trim to turn it into a slightly somber shalwar-kameez lolita outfit. The most time consuming part was cutting and stitching the lace together to make the dupatta scarf.

Here is what it looks like form the back, including a better view of the dupatta.

A detail of the lace under the tucks.

In Lieu of New Content

Things are hectic this week due to an upcoming convention. Instead of learning about a different creation of mine, please enjoy this photo of sisterly devotion:

Anatomy of a Bustle Outfit

This is one of the first Victorian outfits I made for Anthea. For a long time, I wanted to put her in late bustle era clothes, but I could not figure out how to made the centaur type skirts that would entail. After a while, I decided that softer early bustle outfits would be easier, so that's where I went.

Courtesy of Festive Attyre's fashion plates, I chose this skirt pattern, and used it for both the outer skirt and petticoat. The trouble was that I was taking apart a dress of min to put the petticoat together, and I didn't have much of it. The bum ruffles were in danger of being too short. I rectified this by adding eyelet ruffles to the bottom hems, which helped things stick out quite a bit. The bottom is decorated with two pintucks and more eyelet.

The skirt itself is not that remarkable, as its' a plain gored skirt with a really big pleated ruffle at the bottom. Still, it fluffs out nicely, doesn't it?

The top was inspired by this pattern. It wasn't until much later that I realized that I didn't follow the pattern as closely as I wanted (I stitched up seams that were meant to be loose,) but I like how it turned out. I used beads to mimic buttons and highlight the side pleats.

Progress Report

Nothing too exciting going in terms of doll swing these days. Comic Con is approaching, and I'm trying to finish my human-sized costume for the event.

Still, some weeks ago, I drafted the bodice for Kozu's outer Renaissance gown and played with some sleeve designs.

 I initially waffled between straight sleeves and shoulder rolls, but the roll looks more interesting, doesn't it?

 I just need to redraft the roll so it doesn't look so wrinkly. This is especially important as I have some satin earmarked for the outer gown. 

Crochet Trio

One day I spotted a free pattern on Den of Angels for a sleeveless crocheted dress. Due to a need to diminish my yarn stash, I picked up my small hook, some pretty red yarn and got to work...

The first issue was of the gauge. The pattern called for 70 odd stitches for the first row, which would have been to small for my MSD sized girls, so I increased it to 90 odd. When I noticed how lopsided her arm holes and back pieces were in relation to the waist, it took me a while to realize that I forgot to adjust the stitch numbers to accommodate the extra length. By this time it was too late to pull it out and start over (the yarn had been cut and knotted in places, plus wool is sticky and doesn't like to be pulled,) so and asymmetrical closure it was.

The next hiccup was not having enough yarn for the skirt. I tried to add a huge ruffle of contrasting yarn to make up for it, but that got boring after a while, so I declared that this would be worn with modesty trousers.

For dress number 2, I was armed with two hand dyed balls of yarn in similar shades of yellow. Neither one was terribly big, so a third skein in contrasting material was used for decorative bands to lengthen the skirt while making the yellow last. When I ran out of the first yarn, I put in a band of the contrast before starting with the second yellow to help disguise the difference in shade.

The third dress used crochet cotton, which led to a minor downfall. I had plenty of yarn to work with this time and the construction went smoothly except for some small details. On this dress the waist was higher and the shoulder further apart, but I decided to use this as a design feature. More annoying was that I was two thirds done with the skirt before I noticed that it was a bit too narrow, so I pulled it out and started over. During the second creation of the skirt I began getting a repetitive strain injury and I had to put it down for at least a month. Once I picked it up again I chose to finish the skirt at knee length rather than make my arm hate me by making it longer.

To emphasize the shoulder width, I added yellow along the armholes.

Forties fun

After reading my book Forties Fashion (see my Library) a few too many times, I got an itch to make some 40s wartime dresses. As great an inspiration as the book and its many photographs is, I wanted some other sources to glean ideas from. After some poking around online, I found the Blitzkreig Baby website and its descriptions of uniforms for women serving in the various armed and medical forces. The dress uniforms, while pretty, didn't grab my fancy, though the work clothes did and I started sketching, stealing aspects here and there.

What with fabric consumption being carefully maintained during the war years, skirts were fairly short and narrow, and it was common for garments to be made from multiple materials. I pulled out a large scrap of checked material, some muslin and other smaller bits of cloth and got to work.

The idea for this dress was taken from the striped Army Nurse Corps uniform, though I left off the tie as I wasn't sure how to get it to hang right in 1/3 scale. I was going to leave off the pockets, as I couldn't get the two to sit on the skirt and look balanced, and then I realized there was only one on the skirt. Silly me.

I don't remember what uniform inspired this dress, only that i liked the idea of a collar and lapels on a work outfit.

Knitted Dresses

Way back when Mariko was still new to my group, I was hunting for clothing patterns for her. I heard that Blythe clothes fit her mold, so off I went to look. I already knew that Knitty had patterns for Blythe. Through them, I found WoolyRockers free patterns, and from there, a simple tube dress pattern on another site. I made two dresses with that pattern, though when I went hunting to find it for the second project, I couldn't find the place. Instead, I took a look at outfit #1 and figured it out from there.

Here is the first dress. It was done on double point needles in mostly stockinette, with some ribbing at the waist. Up top are a pair of flaps to cover the upper body, also done in rib, and eyelet holes in the back that serve as buttonholes. The buttons were are the result of knotting, and though they work, they don't look the greatest. Also, when I first made this dress, it was a glorified shirt, and I had to add some rows at the bottom to cover Mariko's underpants.

The second one has pretty beads for buttons, longer flaps, and a longer skirt. When I photographed Mariko for this post, I put her in some purchased Licca pants for the fun of it, and it rather highlights how short these things are. Oh well, she's a little girl so the occasional innocent short skirt is all right.

Spring Green in Winter

Some years ago, I had to spend the night in the hospital for tests. I brought with me some yarn, knitting needles, and the book Knitting on the Edge. I took two patterns and made this for Linnea:

I also made a couple of other tube tops for her, but they're in different colors and don't coordinate like these two do.

Steamy clothing

Recently, I participated in a steampunk swap. I'm not too experienced with steampunk costuming, so I figured it would be a nice challenge, especially since I don't care for gears and goggles. They have their place, but I think it's more interesting to have an outfit without those visual shorthands. As it turns out, the doll I was assigned to likes his clothes on the simple side, with a taste for trousers, waistcoats, and stripes.

The materials came from my stash, with the shirt coming from a human sized shirt that became too small in the chest for me. This was made with rectangular construction. The vest front is made from trouser scraps, and the back is from a striped pillowcase that became a mockup for a defunct assassin's hood project. The trousers is form a pinstripe printed fabric that I bought years ago, thinking to make a suit skirt, but never got around to.

As a bonus, I decided to crochet a Doctor Who inspired scarf. Alas, it was my undoing. I got it to a respectable length, though not of Fourth Doctor proportions, but between that crochet project and another one, I got a repetitive strain injury in my forearm.

Polka-dotted Edwardian

At a small fabric and crafts shop, I bought a fat quarter of black material with white polka dots. Though the shop lady though that the scale was off in regards to doll clothing, I thought it would be perfect for Anthea. All I needed was the right design.

Previously I played with the idea of giving Anthea a late Victorian bordering on Edwardian. I even made a petticoat and bought some fabric for the dress. I found a pattern I could enlarge and everything. However, I decided that her wardrobe was already full to bursting and I scrapped the plan. And then I found a 1905 Bleuette pattern and decided to make an Edwardian cut dress with the polka dots fat quarter.

A new petticoat was in order. I made one using the skirt portion of my enlarged pattern and put it multiple pintucks for stiffness. It is not a pretty thing, which is why I won't show it, but it gets the job done. I found the old petticoat and wanted to use that, but it's too full and too long to fit under the dress.

For the dress itself, I didn't have enough fabric from the quarter to make the whole thing, so I used some scraps of solid black to make the cuffs and ruffle. The ruffle is my favorite part. the idea is clever, using clusters of pintucks to gather the fabric. Alas, I gut the fabric too long, so to get it to fit the hem, I needed to add more tucks, so you don't really see the little groups.

I feel it's a fairly plain dress, but more or less concurrently with it, I enlarged a pattern for a detachable collar and set to embroidering it. Like many projects, it sat around uncompleted for a long time. When I finally finished the dress, I realized it could use some dressing up, so I finally got around to completing the collar.

A Little Dress

I had a scrap of some pretty wine fabric with birds and grapes printed on it since middle school, and I still hadn't done anything proper with it. Courtesy of an easy Bleuette pattern and some green cloth from mom's long forgotten stash, I made this:

 

I needed to piece the print together to make it, but that's all right. I was more bothered that there was only enough material to make an indecently short dress, but thankfully the girls have leggings and trousers to keep their underpants hidden. 

Simple Skirt

In the name of experimenting, I bought some lengths of wide lace to pleat into skirts for the girls. The piece with the adorable rocking horses and hearts would naturally go towards the younger ones.

Little Red Dress

Interestingly enough, the dress was originally going to be a knock off. Tonner's Agnes Dreary was on the market, and I liked some of the outfits, but I wasn't inclined to buy any. My first tiny was on the way though, and I wanted her to have some clothes waiting for her. I thought the red jumper outfit was cute, and I considered making a knock off. Almost immediately I imagined getting yelled at by doll collectors for doing the less than legal thing. So I took the basic design and ran with it.

The eyecatch of the outfit is the red A-line trimmed in black. I stuck with that, but added sleeves and a collar. The black trim would be moved upwards, and consist of machine stitching. Patterning was simple. I modified the Undead Threads YoSD shirt into a dress and called it a day. Then I realized that there wasn't enough allowance for both front hems and closures. I took some black bias tape, added snaps, and stitched it down the front. The end result is:

The first time I took Calla out to a doll meet in this dress, I got many compliments.

Colorful Kasuri

This is one of a set of dresses I made for a doll I planned for, but who didn't work out. The clothes are now for the red-headed sisters. The pattern is another Bleuette, and i don't remember why I eventually chose to enlarge it.

The point of the outfit is to show off the material. One vacation, I bought a scrap of vintage kasuri and wanted to show it off in something. There's not very much of it, so it needed to be an accent rather then the whole thing. Hence, it became the vest, waistband and the sleeve cuffs.

Most of the outfit comes from fabric older than me. The light blue is from my mom's old stash, and I needed to cut carefully in order to have enough for the gathered yoke front and have enough left over for the skirt. As it so happened, the skirt was so narrow it made the whole thing look unbalanced, and I didn't have enough to piece in a fuller skirt. I took some triangles of cotton teal and used those as gores to make the skirt wider. I think the brightness of the teal goes well with the kasuri.

Front bodice detail

As a last note, since I ran out of blue toned thread and I am in no mood to get more, for the hem I decided to machine sew it in black, and then add another row to make a decorative edging.

A Serbian Outfit

This outfit was an exercise is using old cloth. The materials used were antique silk, and I didn't have much of it.

The challenges of the dress portion was how to make a skirt long enough to go past the knees. This was a bit tricky as the pattern I chose, Bleuette's Serbian ensemble, has a rather high waist. The cloth also had a fair amount of holes, so in cutting around the damaged portions, I might have had enough for a shirt. Instead, I opted to embroider flowers over the holes.

Cosplay Complete

This was for a cosplay swap. My partner wanted one of two outfits, and I chose the one that seemed less complicated. It still took a fair amount of work. 

I'm not familiar with what this character is from, though I'm guessing a visual novel.

I made the choice to convey the idea of the outfit rather than work myself into a tizzy trying to get the exact fabrics and do fine work outside of my familiarity. Mostly I didn't want to make a lace up bustier with exact scale eyelets. Finding something that could stand in for a belt buckle was tricky enough.

The bustier is mostly hand stitched. It hooks up the back (because I forgot to add allowance for snaps,) was hemmed with ribbon pleated and sewn on the edges. The center has some ribbon appliqued and sewing thread crocheted into a string and tacked on to mimic lacing.

The stockings are made from bias cut material edged with bias tape, the necktie came from this pattern (link) and the hat was a bit of a cock up. I cut the hat a little too small to it looked funny sitting on the head. I fixed it with some quilt binding, though it now looks like a cadet cap instead of a newsboy.

The belt gave me some grief. Once I finally found some buttons that could work as a buckle, I tried threading ribbon through it belt style. Pulling the loose end through the last time was a tug of war I barely won. The skirt was much easier, consisting of a loose hanging lining in white edged with lace, the black main part, and three purple ruffles over a third of the skirt. The waistband was purposefully cut wide as the skirt is supposed to be barely there and low on the hips.

Here it is. The necktie wasn't included in the picture, as I don't know how to knot one.

 

...Also, it wasn't until now that I realized that the skirt ruffles are barely visible in this picture. Oh well, I still like how the overall outfit turned out.

Lace and Knit

This is a blend of stuff I made ages ago. The tube top is made from a rib pattern from Knitting on the Edge, the skirt is Hey Mickey! from Knitty, and the sleeves are supposed to be a Regency spencer but didn't look right over the gowns.

A Study in White

I rather like this photograph and color combination. The petticoat is part of Kozu's original outfit, the tube top was made by me in college, I don't remember when.

Project Runway Final Product

Here is what I've been working on for the past month. Other than pants hiccups (the second being how it barely pulls up over her hips,) construction came smoothly. This is Heather in her action girl glory.

What the under robe looks like.

Detail of the headpiece.

Glamor shot.