Checking Brown

I chose the pattern and fabric for this over a year ago, maybe even two. Back when I was creating a series of outfits with modern cuts but with a geometric influence, I designed a vest with an asymmetric closing and matching skirt. 

Eventually I found that the vest was way too big, so I took it in on the back and sides with inverted pleats.
The skirt is a length of fabric pleated into place and held with a waistband.

I got the material from a pile of vintage fabric at a shop when I was on vacation, and I didn't want to cut too much into it. I didn't want to cut too much into it, so this simple desire is just right. 

The shirt is part of a purchased outfit and is here to preserve modesty.

More Than a Little Bias

A while ago, I received some swap items, including a dress that didn't meet my standards. As the price limit for the swap was low and handmade items are labor intensive, I wasn't bothered. Even if I don't care for the items (which is uncommon,) I can have fun with the materials.


The dress quickly became acquainted with the seam ripper, and I laid out my sock pattern. Since this is plain weave and not knit, it's cut on the bias for stretchiness.

Here they are, modeled by the lovely Dalya:

Close up:

Cheery Holiday Photo

Please enjoy the end of year festivities.

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:

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.

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 Parade of Uniforms

I have a soft spot for uniforms. I had absolutely no desire to wear one as a student, but for cosplay or as something to put my girls in, I love playing with designs. Most of these are my own creations, but a couple are cosplay outfits.

Here are Dalya and Lilja. The former is sporting a jumper I'm really pleased with. The fabric is nice and I love how full the skirt is. A shirt with full sleeves and a big round collar compliment the look.

Lilja is cosplaying the uniform from the game Katawa Shoujo. The shirt in the game is rather complex, but I simplified things by just topstitching the princess lines rather than cutting them out. The skirt is supposed to be solid rather than striped, but the developers said that the school allows some level of customization with student's clothes, and this was the closest material I had. The ribbon is a bit of decoration pinned to my sewing kit that occasionally cameos on this ensemble.

Now it's Yu Wei, Mariko, and Yu Lian's turn to show off. Yu Wei's jacket isn't as fun as I thought it would be, but it might be more flattering on someone else. My favorite part of the outfit is the skirt anyway. Mariko's was initially for Calla, but it came out way too small. Her skirt is a ribbon I pleated and added a hook and eye to.

Yu Lian's clothes are my attempt at an Alice in Wonderland style uniform. The high collar of her shirt are supposed to lend a serious official air to something that is usually whimsical. There are also pintucks, but that's hard to see beneath the apron. I was seriously waffling on how to include the pinafore into the design, but one of my friends assured me that aprons used to (maybe they still are?) be common elements on girl's uniforms in parts of Eastern Europe. Again, for formality's sake I made it double breasted. The pattern for it I took from Tudor Links The skirt is just another version of the early bustle skirt I've made umpteen times now.

This is what I consider to be Mariko's kindergarten uniform. It got stained some time ago and I haven't yet gotten around to fixing it. Isn't it adorable? It's a jumper with a smock on top.

Summer editions!

Part two, containing non homemade uniforms, is posted here.

Make It Black

One of the swaps I participated in was called the Black Swap, which naturally had to do with black items. My partner did not have anything specific in mind, and her doll was described as being feminine with the occasional fondness for surprising others. In addition to black, she wanted light pink to serve as a complimentary color.

Here are in progress photos of the embroidery.

Here is Dalya, kind enough to model the cape:

La, La, Dalya

In September 2011 my mother and I went to Japan. There were many places we wanted to see, things we wanted to try, and gardens to admire. We decided in advance how to cope with only one of us knowing the language, and how to prevent translation headaches. Of the places we put on our itinerary, Kyoto and Volks' Tenshi no Sato were included.

Due to my strong penchant for giving myself thought exercises I took a look at some of the MSDs available at Sato courtesy of some fan sites, asking myself what doll I would get if the chance presented itself. None of the regular molds caught my fancy, and the MSD sized Tenshi doll really didn't grab my fancy.

Still I played along with myself. If I got a new girl, she would be a sister to Rica and Lilja, as I was bringing them along. Miss Hypothetical would be the middle sister. As there is not much of an age gap between these two sisters, I would prefer it if the new girl served as Lilja's older twin. No matter what Miss Hypothetical's default hair and eyes were, I'd switch them out to coordinate with Rica and Lilja.

At Sato there was much browsing and photo taking, some disappointments and considerable laughs, and shopping to be had. The angel looked much nicer in person that it did in the promotional photos. After much careful deliberation, we got her. 

Once we got back to our room I let out the new girl, dressed her, and plopped a red wig on her head.



A couple of years ago, I bought Lilja a silvery human sized ring that looks like flowers joined together.  It tends to get buried under the avalanche of other rings Lilja wears as bracelets. For the new girl, I took it off of the little sister and put it on her wrist. It was like magic, there was now cohesion between the twins, like I planned it all along.



I named her Dalya in honor of the X Japan album and the Angela Aki song, of which the title of this post is a reference. These two pieces of music are actually spelled "Dahlia," but I'm sticking with the alternate spelling on account of my fondness for the Silent Hill games, and a major villain is named Dahlia.