Blue and Red and Heroic All Over

Late last year, I was participating in a winter themed swap. One of my partners had a tiny with no warm tops, and a fondness for superheroes. Off I went to dig up medium blue and cherry red material, the classic hero colors.

The shirt is a simple rectangular style top, trimmed in red. Details on this and other pieces are in the link.

Attack of the Face Huggers

Below, you will see the reason for my long absence. It is not because I am easily distracted, or that it's hard to get back into the habit of blogging. You see, I've been stalked by flat brown slug-creatures that enjoy adhering to my mouth, nose and eyes. It wasn't until recently that I was able to trap them, and imprison them on my ironing board:

A sweater I'd been working on felt bad for their plight, and decided to join them in a show of solidarity.

In a Day

This skirt is a little something I whipped up with some self striping yarn the summer before I started graduate school. As the title suggests, it was much quicker than I anticipated. I whipped it up using the Hey Mickey pattern found on Knitty.

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.

Red and white with ribbon

When I saw this apron pattern on http://www.thesewingacademy.com/, I knew it would make an excellent jumper for a Tiny. I still have a lot of ribbon print material after I made this shalwar kameez, so I used some and put together a coordinating red shirt from what used to be a shoe bag. This dress looks terrible without a a discernable waist, but that is nothing a generous sized bit of red ribbon can't fix.

Ten People, Ten Colors

This is the other outfit I made for my Dark Circus swap partner. Alas, she did not care for the dress.

For this outfit, she wanted a long dress topped with a corset. Once again, I used the spider print, and instead of bands of white fabric as she shown in a sketch, I used some lace I had on hand. For the top of the dress, I used a very simple pattern with built in sleeves. I then realized I miscalculated and made the sleeves too narrow for the arms, so I pieced in material to the shoulders. the vast majority of the dress is hand stitched, and the raw edges overcast with a buttonhole stitch.

The corset too is mostly hand sewn. instead of boning, as resin dolls don't squish, I used pintucks in contrasting fabric to simulate boning. For the lacing, I used thread bars.

The headdress is made from a bangle clipped to be a headband, and beads glued on.

Though she liked the corset, she thought the bodice should have been lined, and the edges machine finished rather than by hand, and that all the raw edges should be concealed.Using felled or French seams would have eaten up too much seam allowance, and lining on this scale would have been too bulky for my liking. She also didn't care for the handsewn portion of the trousers of the other outfit. I am a firm believer that some things are best hand stitched, where I have more control, than trusted to a sometimes mercurial machine.

The back of the bodice is also apparently uneven, which I find credible, and something I would easily miss, as details like that don't bug me.

As the title says, some people have different tastes.

Knitted Dresses

Way back when Mariko was still new to my group, I was hunting for clothing patterns for her. I heard that Blythe clothes fit her mold, so off I went to look. I already knew that Knitty had patterns for Blythe. Through them, I found WoolyRockers free patterns, and from there, a simple tube dress pattern on another site. I made two dresses with that pattern, though when I went hunting to find it for the second project, I couldn't find the place. Instead, I took a look at outfit #1 and figured it out from there.

Here is the first dress. It was done on double point needles in mostly stockinette, with some ribbing at the waist. Up top are a pair of flaps to cover the upper body, also done in rib, and eyelet holes in the back that serve as buttonholes. The buttons were are the result of knotting, and though they work, they don't look the greatest. Also, when I first made this dress, it was a glorified shirt, and I had to add some rows at the bottom to cover Mariko's underpants.

The second one has pretty beads for buttons, longer flaps, and a longer skirt. When I photographed Mariko for this post, I put her in some purchased Licca pants for the fun of it, and it rather highlights how short these things are. Oh well, she's a little girl so the occasional innocent short skirt is all right.

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.

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.

Casual Trio

Here is a sample of some less elaborate things I make for my girls. Some of these pieces I even finished in a timely fashion!

The skirt Mariko is wearing was my first attempt at making the spiral ribbed skirt for Calla and Nurit. I made some error in the instructions, as the waist ended up much too small for the bigger girls. Up top she is wearing the Sleeves a Go Go (second pattern from the top) pattern made for Blythe that looks good on her.

Nurit has a blouse made from a 1930s Bleuette pattern. The ruffle really makes the shirt, doesn't it? The skirt is from a scrap of cloth I had since grade school. There wasn't much of it left, but with careful cutting it made a respectable skirt.

Calla's dress was one of the first three dresses I made for Yu Wei, before she arrived. I was going through some of Yu Wei and Yu Lian's older things and decided that I wasn't thrilled with the construction of the dress. Calla was fairly new to my group at the time, so I concluded that it would be best to cut down the bodice and turn it it into a summery tiny dress.

The shirt she has on over the dress was made during a time I worried that she and Nurit has more skirts than tops. Few bjds wear shortgowns which are really simple to made and was something I could take with me where ever. I got horribly distracted (again,) so it took me a while to finish the pleats, but this top has served us well.

Nurit's Skivvies

Nurit is almost, but not quite, Calla's size. This is not enough for me to justify making clothes that fit only her, but Yo sized things might end up swimming on her. My solution was to make her bulky underwear, courtesy of The Bleu Door.

I'm not showing layer one in all its glory as I'm a bit embarrassed about it. It's an undershirt and shorts joined into one that I thought I adapted to her size, but it was too short, making the shoulder straps dig into her joints, forcing her arms out of its sockets. I put up with it for a while, but I ended up taking it apart and letting out the shoulder and crotch seams. It fits her now, but the straps look longer than I'd like.

Here's the original embroidered leaf I did for it:

Some time later, saw a simple slip pattern with adorable embroidery and I came to the conclusion that the dresses and such were still a bit too big, and she could do with another layer. While I was at it, I would decorate the first layer to be prettier and coordinate with the slip:

Mariko's Old Fashioned Dress.

After spending a little too much time on this lovely woman's website, I got it into my head to make a mid Victorian outfit for Mariko.* According to my research, the shoulders should be dropped, the skirt full, the petticoat stiff, and the drawers should peek out from the bottom. aside from that, there were several bodice and sleeve designs to choose from. I chose a plain ungathered bodice with a jewel neckline and full bishop sleeves (and later worked myself into a near panic after the dress was done as I could not find evidence of bishop sleeves on children. Sigh.)

First, I made the underdress. I draped the bodice on Mariko, stitched it up (hemming shoulders is so annoying on this scale,) cut out the skirt, added the pintucks for stiffness, and sewed the drawers to the entire thing to reduce bulk at the waist.

The bodice for the dress I took from the 1860's bodice from Patterns of Fashion volume 1, which was almost exactly Mariko's size. For decoration, I took inspiration from the girl on the far right. The trim was made with chain crochet stitched on top of some ribbon I had lying around. It later occurred to me that the cuffs might have been better off in plain white rather then echoing the trim, but I had no desire to take apart the entire thing for a little detail like that.

The only major hiccup is that her right hand could not fit through the armscythe. I had to take off her hand and add an S-hook so that it can be easily removed when she goes in and out of it.

What do you think?

*Actually, I made two dresses, but the second one is very plain, so I have few photos of it.

Bleuette and white

This outfit is one of my personal favorites. It's inspired by young Jennifer's clothes from Rule of Rose (scroll down.) At the time, I didn't know where to find a screen cap of said clothes, but I didn't worry over it as I just wanted something along those lines.

The shirt was adapted from Undead threads, and the jumper pattern came from The Bleu Door. Instead of copying the embroidery, I freehanded the flower images. For the edging, I used the buttonhole stitch, and the flowers were done with stem, lazy daisy, and French knots. Except for the ribbon, everything came from my stash.

Doesn't Calla look sweet?

Dear Little Sisters

I adore the video game Bioshock. While I am far from the best of gamers and still play on old generation consoles, I do keep track a little bit as to what's being made, and hear about the current generation games from my significant other. From what I heard and saw, Bioshock was all kinds of amazing. I decided I should get some tinies to make into Little Sisters.

Shortly after, Volks USA was having one of its many After Party events, which included some YoSDs which caught my eye. This new pair were known as Kanon and Neon, and I found their molds to be adorable. I had some money saved up, so I put in a lottery application to get the girl type, Kanon. I was so thrilled when I found out I won her, and immediately started to sew.

Choosing a name for her was not as simple as designing and making her dresses. After weeks of indecision, I was eating out and noticed a burgundy calla lily in a vase, and decided that my girl would be known as Calla.

Calla made a very good Little Sister, but in the game there are supposed to be many of them. After a while I started casually looking at sales on DoA to see if there were any tinies I liked that I could afford. In particular I liked the Bambicrony Kumi and the Custom House Uri. Very eventually I found a Kumi I could afford and I bought her.

This doll was the first faceup I did, and it included some bad mishaps, including staining (which can't be seen with a wig on,) and broken resin along her lips (which can only be seen very close up.) I highly recommend that for your first faceup, you go for a stylized look. The faces for Little Sisters aren't terribly detailed or subtle, so the end result turned out very close to what I wanted.

After some thinking and research, I chose the name Nurit for this girl. It's Hebrew for "buttercup," and the Latin name for that flower indicates that it grows in rather watery circumstances.

Here are the pair, with Calla in a knit dress that comes from a Bleuette pattern, and Nurit in a clumsily home dyed dress. Since the clothes of the Little Sisters are not the tidiest, it doesn't bother me at all. The needle guns are also made by me.

My Beautiful Girl Mariko

I am fond of many animes and mangas. Elfen Lied is one of them, and I thought it would be great if I had a doll of one of the characters. I forget how quickly I came to the conclusion, but I decided on getting a doll based off of Mariko, the little one I like to describe as a "cute homicidal five year old."

Then came the problem of choosing the body. There was one I thought of getting (one of the tiny Doll in Minds,) but I could not tell if she remained in stock by American retailers, and how often the company would make more of this non limited edition girl. Furthermore, this mold is not a popular one, and my casual searching did not find it on the secondhand market. And then I saw on Den of Angels that there was a group order taking advantage of a sale Cherish Doll was holding. The company had tinies, I found one mold pleasing, and I joined the order.

Tada!

Here she is in a homemade skirt and store bought everything else. Here she is in a doll meetup, borrowing a prop.