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.