The Joy of Fluff

This is something I made Linnea a while ago, when I was on a 1838-1840 kick. I'm aware that this is painfully specific, but I was intrigued by the sleeves that were in vogue at the time. The bodice decorations can be fascinating too.

This is the second dress of this time period I made. The first dress didn't have the delightfully puffy sleeves I was hoping for, so I hoped to make up for it in this one. The sleeves are cut into four pieces, tight upper sleeves, a cuff, big full lower sleeves and a ruffle to hide the join. It backfired a little in that the lower sleeves are too long and collapse upon themselves. Not the sort of look I wanted. Oh well.

The bodice has dropped shoulder and six pieces, with center back and side back pieces, and two parts in front. For this I added a box pleated ruffle. The skirt is plain and fluffs out wonderfully.

Beneath is a petticoat of plain white mystery fabric filled out with gathered panels of lace. By now I am fairly certain that tiered ruffled petticoats weren't period to this time, but it does the job well.

The Art of Pillaging

This was an interesting outfit to make. My swap partner had a long list of things she would like to receive. The short of it was an East Indian influenced steampunk pirate set of clothes. Other details included lots of brown, not much black, with maybe a hint of red and orange. The cut should be loose and baggy to allow for movement, hats and scarves, with pockets and pouches aplenty for storage. Gears, buckles, embroidery, steampunk style squids and octopi, and prop knives were also welcome.

As I don't have much brown fabric on hand, I bit the bullet and bought a yard of brown synthetic. After looking at some Victorian and Edwardian era East Indian clothes, I had a rough idea of how the designs should be, which was thankfully geometric. That made patterning and assembly much simpler.

The Winter Here's Cold

I recently finished a swap with the themes of lace and winter. My partner wanted a medieval inspired gothic dress, with the preferred colors of black, silver, dark purple, and dark blue. One of the sample dresses she showed had a built in hood.

My stash yielded a brocaded fabric with shot black and purple, along with a skirt I made for an outfit I've long since retired. The brocade went to the undergown, and the dark blue became the overgown and matching hood. To make things simple, and to fit with the medieval theme, I used geometric construction, which wastes little fabric and is visually appealing when its all marked out. Since partner stated that her doll is a princess, I expressed this in the richness of the trim and width of the skirts.

Theme and Variation

Here are a pair of alternate dresses made with the same patterns as these two, with different fabric and some light alterations. Instead of plaid, I took a fat quarter of Asian print fabric and some brown scraps.

Yu Wei is wearing the lapel dress, this time without a collar, and for a different solution to the front. The front bodice pieces are shorter than the ones in back. Last time I adjusted at the side seams, but this time I pieced in some brown cloth as a mock waistband.

Yu Lian wears the wrap front pattern, this time without a pocket, and the only contrast in the collar.

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.

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.

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 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.

Two Breaths of Autumn

Here's some old ones from back in my undergrad days. I purchased a yard or so of some pretty black cloth with oak leaves on it, and I had a good idea as to what to do with it. Princess seams would be involved, as well as copious amounts of ruffles. Alas, this was my first time with princess seams and I didn't do any mockups. The resulting dresses were too wide, and I had to take in quite a few seams.

I had a lot more success with the ruffles. They're time consuming, but an inexpensive way to make an outfit fluffy. I had a bit of material left over from the ruffles that I didn't know what to do with, so I put tucks on each side, stitched a ribbon to it and made a headdress.

Yu Lian is modeling the simpler dress with a box ruffle around the hem.

Yu Wei's outfit is mildly risque as the front only buttons to the waist and is open past that. It never shows up in picture or in person so it doesn't bother me. All her ruffles are gathered in the back, on a straight panel of material with the back princess seams only on the bodice portion. 

Rufflebutt!

The buttonholes defeated me quite well. I tried doing them on the machine, but something went rather wrong, and the stitches came loose as I pulled the buttons in and out.  Now the fronts of these dresses are pretty fragile, and the clothes are in retirement until I can think of a way to restore them.

Linnea Layer by Layer

I have an undeniably soft spot for Rococo clothes. My first attempts were definitely stylized with only pretensions to accuracy. As I got better and more confident with a needle, I wanted to do something more intensive. Here is my end result.

What you see here is Linnea sporting a polonaise. This outfit's claim to fame is the looping mechanism that hitches the skirt into swags, keeping it free of the dirty ground. I made it with a coordinating petticoat. Her accessories include a lace apron that was a popular way of displaying yet more wealth. I made it by whipping several lengths of insertion together. On top she sports a tiny pinner cap.

Beneath the gown we get a good look at her corset. Though there are patterns for this type online that are human sized, I had a miserable time trying to scale it down to fit her. By serendipity, someone on Den of Angels had a 60cm scale corset pattern and shared it. It's made from scraps of canvas and boned with cable ties. While it doesn't reshape her resin, it does provide a nice flat surface for bodices to rest on.

We also see her petticoat and apron in more of their glory. As I don't want to cover the point of her bodice, the apron goes beneath the gown.

Here she is in her under petticoat. I put tucks in it to add stiffness and enhance the overall fluffy look of her skirts. This is made from a sheet that I converted into mockup fabric.

Beneath this we get to see...

Linnea- No more.

Oh Glorious Day

I have a soft spot for pintucks, especially in white fabric. I would like to blame this on blastmilk and her pretty photo shoots, and Volks, for having so many dolls have default outfits of this kind. As it happens, Yu Wei and Yu Lian look good in white, so I made them some outfits based on Volks designs, but with my own stamp.

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.

Sisters on the shelf

Here is a picture of Yu Wei and Yu Lian from some years ago. Yu Wei is wearing a dress I fashioned from a pretty handkerchief. Yu Lian's gown has a more interesting tale. It started as a typical plain white Regency dress that someone at a meetup mistook for a nightgown. Soon afterwards I took the dress apart, recut the bodice so the front was flat instead of puffy, and had fun embroidering it.

Pretty in Plaid

Way back when, I acquired some fat quarters from Michael's, including two of the same plaid. I was and still am enamored of Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion series, and I wanted to make something along the lines of a French sack gown.

This dress is nowhere near an exact replica, but I still am fond of the touches I added to it, such as the knee length matching skirt (just visible,) and the sleeve ruffles. Also, this material looks amazing.

Big Girl

Linnea came at the same time as Yu Lian. Someone I know became interested in bjds and wanted one, to be co-owned with me. We agreed on the sculpt, and I thought of the name which she approved. She's named after the title character of Linnea in Monet's Garden. The name is Swedish for "twin flower."

It's embarrassing, but I was not prepared clothing wise for her. She spent her first few weeks wrapped in a bandanna. Fortunately, she has a gorgeous body sculpt. In this photo she's wearing one of the first outfits I made for her, in the Regency style from a scarf. Said scarf was gifted to me for the precise purpose of sewing something interesting from it.

Here she is in a similar dress. This too is made from a scarf, overlayed with lace material. She looks good in anything, though I prefer her in formal outfits or historical things.

And then...

There came Yu Lian. As the story of Rose and Lotus was about a pair of sisters, I started saving up to buy Yu Wei's other half.

Don't they look wonderful together? This was taken shortly after Yu Lian left her box. Yu Lian is modeling a sweater that I adapted for a pattern meant for American Girl dolls, and a sundress beneath that was a part of Yu Wei's initial wardrobe. Yu Wei meanwhile is showing off a Rococo inspired dress I made from a fat quarter. I'm rather pleased with how that dress turned out, it was one of my first self drafted creations, made from a body block I took off of Yu Wei.

Yu Lian is an old body Dream of Doll Tender Zen girl. Her name was chosen to match that of her sister and means "Jade Lotus."

In the beginning

This is my first girl and first love, Yu Wei, shortly after she emerged from her box. In this photo she is modeling one of the first bjd garments I made. Since I had no doll to work from while she was in transit, I found some measurements online and made a few things so that she wouldn't be naked. This blue thing is a T-tunic with sleeves made from rectangles and gussets rather than being set in. The neckline is trimmed with a chain of crochet made from some scrap yarn I had lying around. the tunic was made intentionally big, so that there would be at least one thing that could cover her up while I made better things.

In this picture she shows off another early dress that I made in the Regency style and trimmed with yet more crochet. Whenever I can, I make my own trim and embellishment, since I consider it fun (as long as I don't go overboard) and is cheaper than constant trips to the store.

Yu Wei is a Dream of Doll Twing-key in the old girl's body. Her name is Chinese for "Jade Rose," and is inspired by the Korean folktale "Rose and Lotus."