I thrifted the cloth years ago and got the pattern years ago and bought a bias tape maker years ago and got one of those sewing machine presser feet to help apply bias tape years ago and cut out the pattern pieces years ago
and let it all sit. For years.
I finally decided I would finally make it, view C of Simplicity 8904
Only, of course, I had to make some changes.
And I've decided to post about them here more than I used to, mostly to account for my time.
And, oh, what time I put into these
I have not yet, however, put time into photographing them individually. (I hadn't even found shoes for all of them when I took the photo above.) I started sewing the raindrop dress, on the Barbie in the center, on Friday afternoon, and finished with the patchwork dress at the top on late Sunday. I had only planned to make the raindrop dress and the pink and white dot dress on the Momoko in the lower right corner. But. I kept having ideas.
And while I definitely did not pace myself while making these, I am attempting to pace myself when it comes to photographing them, because I know my natural inclination is to photograph and edit and post them all at once, which would probably take an entire day. I'd like to do other things...
Free motion quilting, that is. I suspected I would feel that way about it, and, yep! I worked on quilting this on and off for what seemed like forever, but was actually only 3½ hours of elapsed time. I don't know how much more on than off it was, either--there were lots of avoidance interludes. And snacks.
(with the caveat that I did sew a few more pieces of doll clothes today, but I gave them to someone and did not take photos.)
Poking around in the archives here will show that I do like making patchwork, but have pretty much never made a quilt (with one single straight line exception.) I have had a stash of pieced quilt tops in my closet for years; some I took a good look at it and said "It was fun to make but I am never going to finish that" and donated some to the craft thrift store. I still had the stash of pieced quilt tops, it was just a smaller stash, somewhat more aligned with my personal tastes.
A big part of the reason I hadn't finished them was because...well...batting is expensive. So, when one of the local Walmart stores remodeled somewhat recently and put two rolls of batting on clearance, I snapped those up. And then they sat in the closet. For quite a while. Kind of in the way (I had to move them every time I wanted to use a backdrop for doll photos that wasn't the painted stage backdrop.)
So, instead of realizing that I could just put them in the top of the closet where the quilt tops were, I decided that Now Is The Time To Make Quilts.
Which required finally acquiring a quilting/darning foot, which I got cheap via eBay. I absolutely do not plan to make quilting something I do regularly, so cheap is fine.
And I do understand that I will probably never do enough free motion quilting to be anywhere near good at it, but I did want to practice on something smaller first. I got into the unsorted scraps from relatively recent projects and chose a pink chambray and a green plaid, and added a thrifted floral that I didn't have a lot of
Then I cut 96 little triangles that I sewed into 48 squares that I sewed into chevrons. I loosely stitched some batting off-cuts to roughly the same size, then made and pinned the quilt sandwich with more of the floral as the backing fabric.
I moved my sewing machine to the end of my sewing table, and put the ironing board next to the table (where I normally sit) to help support the thing--it's 16" x 21" so I probably could have worked with it with the sewing machine in the normal place, but that won't be an option for anything larger so I wanted to get a feel for the new position. I still haven't figured out the best place to put the lamp, but, overall, it worked.
At the end of the previous post, I mentioned that I was thinking about updating the pattern I used for those dresses, and I have now done that
...and then some
I rerooted a doll, but felt like the clothes I had that fit her didn't suit her. Time to sew something!
which also included sewing five more dresses with the same pattern
Yes, I made the previous post of doll clothes I'd sewn over the last few weeks, then spent the intervening time (that was posted on the 20th and today is the 22nd) sewing more doll clothes.
