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:

A hodgepodge

This is a picture I took back in graduate school. All of the girls here are wearing homemade clothes, with the exception of Mariko's green dress.

Yu Lian, who you can't see so well, is in a white dress with grey embroidery and pintucks down the front. Yu Wei is wearing a pinafore with a great many tucks down the front  and around the skirt.

All the tinies are wearing sweaters based off of the same pattern on Den of Angels. What Mariko was wearing was meant for Calla and Nurit, but the yarn was so thin it ended up too small and went to her. Nurit has a cap sleeved sweater due to me running out of yarn, but that makes it nice and spring like. Calla has her top decorate with rows of hot pink running stitches.

Calla and Nurit are also wearing skirts knitted from the same Bleuette pattern, but with different yarns.

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.

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.

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: