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.

Variance

So I worked out fit on the skirt in the last post, transferring the amount I took out of the garment to the pattern, and then I ignored the basic idea and made a markedly different skirt this time.

Because the cloth I wanted to use had a big print, and I didn't have a lot of it, so I wouldn't be able to do proper pattern matching across that front seam--or across a back seam, if the zipper moved there--I decided to put the zipper in a side seam.  But I also absolutely wanted to keep the slash pockets over there, too.

There's a lot of internet that will tell you how to add a (usually invisible) zipper alongside a side seam pocket, but I didn't find anything about installing a zipper next to a slash pocket.  Granted, I didn't look that far into the depths of the search results, but, now that I've done it, I'm guessing it's more because it's not actually a challenge to figure out.  Not that "this is incredibly easy" stops some tutorials from being made--or even that what some people fine easy really is easy for everybody.

And it probably would have been easier if I hadn't also decided to make it a lapped zipper...something I haven't sewn for a  few years...  I got it right the second try.