A Swap to Keep the Cold Away

 I recently participated in a winter holiday swap, and this is what I sent one of my partners.

It was originally going to be a dress for Anthea, but I didn't like how it turned out, so it sat in purgatory for a long time. The swap gave me the idea to give the dress a new home to an owner who'd use it.

My first order of business was to remove the skirt and add a waistband, as I didn't like how high it was originally. As I couldn't find more scraps of the fabric, I took some white cloth and embroidered a design to coordinate with the print. Here's a detail:

From the Early Days

This is one of the first things I made for Anthea, cut from a torn velveteen pair of my pants and trimmed with homemade trim made from yarn.

The skirt is dead simple, made from two trapezoids, a triangle, and a hook and eye. There's no waistband, I just turned down both ends and hemmed. It largely exists to preserve her modesty when she wears the top half of the outfit. The overgown is the star of the show.

What makes the outfit is the contrast of the white on black. The trim inspired by a gown from Patterns of Fashion 3, particularly the curved back and the borders. For make it, I simply made crochet chains until I got the lengths I wanted. The frog balls are also crocheted, and the loops are bits of plain yarn with knots at the end.

Here, she also sports a cap and shawl. As a girl who hates the cold, layers are adored. The cap is called a sortie, and comes from the Godey's Ladies Book, by way of Koshka the Cat. To make it her scale, I did trial and error until it looked right. The shawl is a rectangle of knitted cotton in a basket weave stitch, with fringes at the ends.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Playing With Pintucks

The summer after my junior year, I picked up a Japanese dolly magazine that had some really fascinating patterns in the back. The ones that really caught my eye were finely pintucked garments. The patterns needed to be enlarged, and I did that by hand, with mixed results. The fit is weird, but dang it, I have pretties.

Heather is wearing the suit from Friends2Bmade. Pictures here are from a photostory I did years ago.

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.

Black and White Regency

Way back when, I made Linnea a classical plain white regency dress out of white gauze. Some time after I took a look at it, decided that I wasn't interested in that dress anymore, so I took it apart.



I had it in my head to make more pretty high waisted outfits, but with a bit more historical accuracy. To make the dress hang right, I would make a petticoat. The dress in question would be a wrap front day gown to be topped shawls, spencers, fichus and caps. The petticoat was cut down from Linnea's old dress and given a bit of trim just for fun. The dress was also lightly trimmed, as I didn't think it needed much.

I had good fun embroidering the fichu, which was simple chain stitch and French knots. The shawls I made were long rectangles with fringe (though I made up the patterns off the top of my head rather than research them.) The cap pattern and trim line I took from the Regency Fashion Page. I have no pictures of the spencer, as it was a tough too small to fit over the dress, though it does well over sleeveless tops.

Layers

I like historical costuming. To me its like a puzzle trying to figure out an aesthetic and recreating the look. I try to make my things on the side of authentic. That said, there are things I am lenient on. Fabrics that look good on a human does not always work for a doll. Reproduction materials are not always affordable. When it comes to the proper undergarments, my dolls don't wear very many.

The purpose of the shift is to keep sweat, oils and other bodily grime off of the good clothes. Dolls do not create these things, so I usually bypass this layer. Depending on the era, I don't do corsets either. Resin is not squishy, so corsets would fail to compress and lift.

I do use petticoats though. It effects the hang and fluffiness of the dress, and I enjoy decorating them. Here's an example:

I enjoy making pintucks, and adding ruffled eyelet adds stiffness and poof. Together, we have prettiness.

The Waif

This girl is Anthea. She was a character I created for a now long defunct online game. I liked the character enough and fit the theme of my other girls enough that I started looking for a mold that fit my image of her. Doll in Mind Marianne fit the closest.

Anthea is supposed to be a Victorian girl, though I am adamant that her hair be severely bobbed. This is because she is partially based off of this portrait of Bia Medici. I like bustle outfits on Anthea best, though I've made clothes from other eras for her as well. With her, the general rule is black, white, grey and in rare cases purple.