Another Fashion Doll Pattern--Blouse!

 

 

Back again with another fashion doll clothes pattern to share!  I really have been...uh...thinking about sewing human-size stuff...but I started working on this idea a few months ago, and I stalled out on the project for a while, finally convincing myself to get it all together this weekend.

This is not meant to be a tailored top, and the fit is best on Curvy Barbie and dolls with older-style bodies (with larger bust than modern dolls, but, no,  people-who-hate-Barbie, the bust doesn't scale up that large.  Anyone who sews with vintage patterns knows that no-one was expected to have a bust over 36" back then, sheesh.  Yes, some sarcasm was just here.)  The doll wearing the gray/silver striped version has an articulated Fashionistas body, so it's slightly smaller than the other dolls here:  a Curvy in the mixed print version, a pre-1999 articulated body in the check, and a 1960s clone in the white.

And here's the pattern!

As usual, no guarantees about clarity, you get what you pay for, and all that!

By the by

Posting this to record the fact that I did it--decided that I would use up lots of the pieces of cloth acquired either as gifts or in thrift store fabric grab bags (whooooo are those hard to resist) in colors that aren't quite my style.  My brain's go-to "use up lots of cloth bits" strategy is always patchwork blanket tops, but my brain also always balks at putting lots of time and effort into figuring out what to do with things it doesn't like so much (see also: a large part of why I still haven't made a slipcover for our unpleasantly brown hand-me-down couch...the other part of why I haven't done that is that it's a sectional and I don't have any one fabric in enough quantity to cover it...and I don't wanna make a patchwork slipcover because, as adorable as they can be, it still loops back around to that "too much time and effort for something fundamentally unliked."  Circular thinking, whee!)

Anyway, so, here

It's 71" x 73", and I thought starting with that rectangular piece would end up with a much more aggressively rectangular shape.

The wheat print border does go around the entire thing, it's just flopped over the back of the (ugh) couch in this picture because...effort.  (The weather is cold and dark and wet, so no pictures of it on the lawn like other patchwork blanket tops.)

No idea what I'm going to do wit his, besides fold it and add it to the stack of other finished patchwork blanket tops and cloth selections for potential patchwork blanket tops.  But, hey, it's something not doll clothes!

Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties?

The kiddo currently has an unexpected affinity for older video games, and the absolute favorite is the Half Life series, and his favorite characters in that series are the scientists. ("They have the best memes," he says.)

So, when it was time to choose a Halloween costume, Half Life Scientist it was, no hesitation.  I had been prepared for it to be a HEV suit, which...I'm stubborn enough that I would have figured it out, but, in terms of knowing I can make it, scientist was a relief.  If you don't know how a Half Life scientist looks, here's the pertinent wiki page  http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Mesa_Science_Team (which has a note, as I type this, that it'll be migrating to another domain soon, so apologies if the link is bad.)

I'm sure all the pieces could be purchased commercially--there are places to order lab coats for kids, and the price is surprisingly low, but, y'know...I sew.

"I love them," he said

So this week the kiddo's school rewarded the students for having perfect attendance; the reward was dress up days.  Monday was Labor day, so no school; Tuesday: Hat Day (kiddo didn't care); Wednesday: Sport Jersey Day (kiddo didn't care, and, furthermore, nothing could've stopped him from wearing the t-shirt I freezer-stenciled a Half Life lambda on for him on Tuesday anyway); Thursday: Pajama Day--dingdingding pajama days are his favorites.  He wears pajamas pretty much every day he doesn't have to leave the house (a trait he 100% did not get from me.  I don't even like staying in pajamas when I'm sick.)

The constant pajama wearing was especially hard on the pajama pants I made for him (for the last school pajama day) and that I seem not to have blogged.  They were made from a penguin and snowflake print flannel that someone sent to me, and I had more than enough to make that first pair...and I thought there was enough left to make another pair, a reassurance I stuck to when the pajama pants in question blew out at the knees and ripped in all directions from there.  Which he thought was hilarious.

Not gonna let him wear those to school pajama day, though.

So!  Time to make another pair--this time with reinforced knees, an option already in good ol' KwikSew 2544

I've been using the faux fly from view A for years, but this was the first time using the knee patches from that view.  I also decided to eliminate any hint of the fly completely, as well as extend the top to make a fold over waistband, with elastic all around, instead of the flat front with elastic only in the back as the pattern is designed.  Oh, and, eliminate the pockets. (And also eliminate the cuff elastic, which my brain kinda refuses to even acknowledge is there in the picture.)

But it's basically the same pattern.  Also cut on the size 14 width lines but size 10 leg and size 12 waist rise.  Still the same pattern.

And then of course I discovered that there was not enough of the penguin print left to make an entire pair of pants.

Now...OK...see...

I don't like flannel.

But I do like cloth and bargains and ridiculous prints, so I had a few yards of an eyeglasses print flannel, plus that yard of Pokémon print flannel that the kiddo picked out a few months ago.  He's since lost some enthusiasm for Pokémon and shifted over to Half Life, so I tried selling him on the eyeglasses print as being a very vague reference to the glasses on Gordon Freeman and the other scientists of the game.  He said yeah sure but he also really wanted another pair of penguin pants.  I changed the angle and suggested mixing the prints.  That got some enthusiasm, because this kid does love humorously obnoxious combinations of stuff.

So.  Glasses + Penguins.

I cut the entire back out of the glasses print (no effort to print match, so of course it shows how close it was to matching the print)

 and the front was one leg of each, with the knee patches swapped printwise.

 I didn't look at the pattern directions for the knee patches--I just knew that even two layers of flannel probably wouldn't last too long, so I added a layer of a random cotton broadcloth.

I sewed the flannel to the broadcloth right sides together, then flipped them right sides out and  ironed the edges before aligning the patches with the pattern notches and edge stitching and top stitching the patches to the legs.  I hope three layers of cloth will be more durable.

 Edge stitching along the center seams (which I somehow completely forgot to serge?) and double stitching on the elastic channel.

 The cuffs were serged and then folded inward twice.  I know that serging is kind of a waste there, since the raw edge absolutely does not show, but it really helps me get an idea of how much to fold, since, y'know, I can't be bothered to measure.

When I finished and showed him, he smiled and very quietly said, "I love them."

So yay!

Tomorrow is the last day of dress up week--the theme is Mismatched Day.

That should be interesting...

Succumbing to the Cocoon Dress

Sorta.

I follow a lot of sewing blogs, and it seems like cocoon dresses are always popping up in those.  I get that the construction is novel and the appearance is interesting, but I can't even begin to imagine me wearing one.  This doesn't mean I won't, just...not now.

However...I do have this army of, y'know, fashion dolls...

So here we are

And, yes, I made a pattern to share!

I believe you should be able to right click and save, and the 1" and 1cm lines are included to double check that they print out at the correct size for those famous size fashion dolls--and this will fit all of the body variations available as of late 2018, too.  The dolls on the ends in the photo are both Curvies.

The multitude of arrows on the side front pattern piece are, if it's not obvious, because grain can be used creatively on that piece.

This version has the grain straight

This one had the side cut on the cross grain

This one's on the bias

 ...and this one uses the no-pocket front piece.

 The picture is taken from the side to show the curve of the back seam that they all have.

And now I have cocoon dresses out of my system!  Tiny cocoon dresses...

Cool Cat

Another pair of Obnoxious Shorts™ for the kiddo!

I let him pick out several prints at JoAnn in the beginning of the summer, and I'm slowly making things from them--first the cash shirt, now...this

Yes, another Kwik Sew 2544--it goes up to kid size 14, so we should have a few more years of use out of it.  For now, I can still squeeze a pair of long shorts (longer than the pattern expects) out of  one yard of a directional print.

Barely.

 This print has a wide selvedge, and there's a bit of it visible on this pocket, although the other side

is fine.  Relatively.  I didn't have enough cloth to be able to be in any way selective about what cat landed where, so there's this really close repeat here.  (This is why I like to pattern match across center front seams when at all possible, just to avoid repeats like this.)  I folded a bit of width out of the pockets to get them to fit on the bits of cloth they were cut from, too.

Fortunately the print on either side of the fake fly front is not as annoying

There's one cat with a purple collar, so I decided to use purple thread.  Why not?

The same cat ended up accidentally almost pattern matching on one part of the back seam curve, too

so she's definitely the star.


The cuffs were serged--just to give me a reference for depth--and turned twice before being stitched

I thought they looked a bit long on him, but he didn't say anything,and they'll probably seem significantly shorter by the end of the school year.

(This was the only picture that wasn't a blur of movement.)  He has several shirts with realistic cat prints, so he should be able to get a lot of use out of these shorts!

(And I have a small amount of the cat print left...which is probably going to become some bit of alarmingly loud doll clothes, because that's what I do...)

Boo?

Another doll pattern! (I did sew a Human Size Thing, which the kiddo is wearing to school today, will try to get a photo of him wearing it when he's home)

The hat in the picture was made without interfacing, mainly to prove to myself that it could be.  I've always used interfacing in these before.  Some examples:

Tiny Dolly Swirly Skirty

It only took me a few iterations to get the swirl just right--lots of tutorials around for making hugely twirly flouncy swirl skirts, but not so much for this more restrained A-line shape.

 That means this version is all about the print mixing, which...I've mentioned I love, yes?  Because you can put a lot of thought into it or you can grab stuff completely randomly and either way it's fine, because I firmly believe "If you sew it together, it goes together."  Humans are so good at finding patterns that our brains will make connections anyway...

(and the next Human Size sewing project is being planned.)

Doll patterns I've shared so far

I do intend to sew human size stuff more than I have been, but, y'know...doll clothes are always going to be faster and therefore give that sense of accomplishment a whole lot faster.

The "doll clothes = fast accomplishment" feeling gets taken down a few notches when I decide to work on a pattern to share with people--my own doll patterns are pencil-scribbled messes with weird seam allowances and imperfections that I know I have to work around.  I don't wanna do that to other people, so I actually put a bit of work into getting things...well, maybe not completely right, but better for the patterns I share.

I've posted all of them on Flickr, but I decided it might be helpful to post them here, too.  They're all for 11"-ish fashion dolls, and now that there are multiple common sizes of those, this pattern size range includes them, too.

I have not yet counted how many of these I've 'released', so...this should be interesting...

Breathable Soft Cash

After the kiddo's last dentist appointment, I took him to JoAnn Fabric to pick out cloth.  Now, my intent was to use the cloth to make many more pairs of Obnoxious Shorts™, but he said he would rather have some of them as shirts.

 Not a problem!  ...mostly...

Cheapskate or Pinterest Inspired?

Eh, well, I'll tell you that I try to avoid Pinterest, and you probably figured out I was a cheapskate three or four "thrift store grab bags" ago, but I hope this could be mistaken for some Overachieving CraftMom project.

Basically, it's time to start getting ready for Back To School supply runs.  I knew we had several things on the list for fourth grade already (we're set on 70 page wide ruled notebooks for the foreseeable future), and I thought of how many crayons and markers and colored pencils we had...especially those that were brought home, barely used, at the end of last school year.

And, yes, really, this isn't a case of being a cheapskate, because none of these items cost much.  It's far more a case of "look, if we already have them, why do we need to buy them over again, 'cause that just seems wasteful."  I just couldn't think of a pithy way to set that against Pinterest in the title.  (And there's also the fact that I started making a shirt for the kiddo using Burda 9419 and hadn't stitched much of it together before I realized I really wanted a button band, so today's sewing may have been spurred by procrastinating on that design alteration.  Again...not pithy.)

I have an excess of zippers, including a lot of vintage models with metal teeth, and I had a bit of somewhat heavy clear vinyl that was salvaged from the cover of a sample book of interior decorating fabric, and I had a bobbin still loaded with "jeans gold" from that enh skirt I made somewhat recently (which I'm wearing today.  It's not as bad as I thought it was.)

I was not, however, enthused about cutting that vinyl.  Using scissors was out, unless I wanted to draw lines on the vinyl first.  Using a rotary cutter didn't appeal, because I know I'm not exactly skilled at using those.

Then I remembered this thing

which is made for cutting paper and poster board and just things in general that are significantly thinner than the vinyl I wanted to use.  Still, it scored the vinyl in a lovely straight line that then allowed the vinyl to be gently pulled apart along that score.

And then I completely obscured most of those lovely straight edges with some decorative zigzagging

They are lovely and straight, though.

I sewed this one first, forgetting to swap the regular needle for the vinyl needle.  When sewing the zipper, it seemed like absolutely no problem.  When sewing vinyl to vinyl...yeah.  I definitely swapped the needle after.

The narrow zigzag around the edges is slightly for decoration and mostly to try to keeps the ends of the zipper tapes from fraying.  I probably won't see these things again until the upcoming school year ends, so that's when I'll find out if it worked.

I could have used 'normal' cloth for these, but I thought "being able to see what's in the bag" would be appreciated.

And they do kinda look cool.

The crayon bag is constructed differently from the others.  The last large bit of the vinyl had the interior decorating fabric collection name printed on it.  Since the kiddo likes green, I decided to turn the letters to the inside (they're somewhat visible from the back, but, in real life, not as much as they are in the upper photo) and let the green background bar become a graphic element, and I wanted only to fold it over instead of cut through it.  I also didn't have any zippers the right length to go along the side of what was left, and I did not want to shorten a metal zipper, so I trimmed just a bit to make it work with a 4" zipper on the short end.

Since these are sewn in a way that feels inside-out, it was no problem to set the zipper into the ends of a folded piece of vinyl.  Then the sides were flattened and sewn.  Taadaaa!  Crafty or frugal?

...well...both, of course.

Force Shorts

This is another thing I made a while ago but hadn'r blogged--the only reason I'm doing it now is because I want to get the pattern of of my desk (it was only on my desk to remind me to blog it...)

Anyway.

I thrifted Butterick 5090 a while ago, thinking only of using the kid size coat to make something for the kiddo.  Who, it turns out, was already too large for the kid sizes included in the pattern.  I mean...that didn't actually stop me from using the smallest adult size as the base of a jacket for him.

A very nice person has sent me a lot of cloth, including a few bits intended for the kiddo, including about a yard of Clone Wars Prequel era Start Wars print.  The kiddo, though...well, yes, he knows and watches Star Wars stuff, but Star Wars is nothing special to him.  It's just...there.

So I decided I'd use that bit of cloth to eke out a pair of pajama shorts for me, using the pants pattern part of Butterick 5090, and here they are

Pockets!  They're big enough for the 3DS

And near pattern matching!  That was, if I remember correctly, unintentional, and, with how little cloth I had to work with, something I didn't even think was possible.

The cloth has a lot of printing flaws, but that's fine for pajamas.

The accidental near pattern matching continued on the back, too.  So...uh...yay.