I think I have found the magic solution for my 18 inch dolls!

Spring seems to have arrived! I was awoken early by a robin singing loudly outside the window, and it was a glorious sound and a wonderful way to start my day. Well, I didn't really start my day right then as I dozed back off for a bit, but it is a sign that today is going to be a good day. It's grey and overcast and we are likely to have rain, but its warm and full of the sounds of life. :) 

Yesterday I decided the time had come to once again go through my 18 inch dolls and try to bring some order to my collection. Since falling down the rabbit hole of Our Generation dolls last year, I have added several of those, and my collection began to lose direction and make me once again feel overwhelmed. I know - this is a subject I seem to keep blogging about. I get up to 30 or so dolls, feel horribly overwhelmed, try to cut them down, sometimes achieve it, and then, my collection would bloat back up because, let's face it, I have no power to resist the cuteness. It is frustrating though to seem to lose all control over my  collection, due to my inability to maintain self control, because in the end I stop being able to enjoy what I have. 

My solution in the past was to always just clean out the numbers of dolls that I had. Which, as you can see, is not a real good solution for me! Finally though it dawned on me what exactly I needed to clean out. I needed to prune down how many time periods I want to collect and create with my dolls. I love history and I love sewing. I also love dolls. Put these 3 things together and what I ended up with was a long list of all of these eras I wanted to create. Which is A LOT. If 18 inch dolls were my only collection, then this wouldn't be so overwhelming and also quite doable. But they aren't.

So basically, what I did, was I took some time and thought long and hard over what time periods are actually my favorites - not only for sewing dresses, but also hair styles, accessories and furniture. And that was a no brainer. The 30's and 40's. I also really like the 50's. I thought I liked the 60's, but truthfully, I only like the first like 3 years before the mod look came in. Basically, when the dresses changed from the 50's form, the decade loses me. 

I seem to love the Julie collection, and its been a consistent love since I first saw her collection. For some strange reason, her furniture and accessories were some of my instant favorites. I have her plates and cups and they are some of my most favorite things. Also, the clothing of the 70's while tacky and crazy just tickles me. I love the Julie doll. So, Julie and the 70's stay, the 60's go. 

I have a Mattel Felicity (from probably 2005/6), and I was lucky enough for find her wooden guitar for a steal, and also got her Shrewsbury Cakes Kit. If you were to ask me which doll embodies the magic and soul of Pleasant Company/American Girl, I would say Felicity. I adore her collection. As beautiful as the Elizabeth doll is, she really isn't a part of this perfect Felicity world, so Felicity and her collection stays, Elizabeth goes.

I have wanted to make a 1920's doll forever, and I have researched the era a lot for that fine day when I actually have a chance to start recreating it. I have several of Rebecca's things that I just cannot part with. I mean, her BF meet hat is just amazing! I figure that these 2 eras - 1910's and 20's, while not as favored as the 30's and 40's are enjoyable enough and close enough that I will keep a couple of dolls in these 2 decades.

As much as I have enjoyed (off and on) the 1800's, these eras have just not been as exciting for me, so they have been eliminated as well. I have sewn a lot of MG clothing for commissions, and that was fulfilling enough to just remove them completely from my own dolls. I'm also not doing anything Victorian. While I might do some Puritan era clothing for Felicity just for fun, I am also removing anything Tudor or medievel fantasy or historical. I have also cut off Lolita and everything modern. And eliminated goth and boys of any style/time period. (I have plenty of boys to dress with my BJDs.)

This feels amazing! While I did cut off a couple of dolls that I really never felt much of a connection to, I still have 19 of them, and it actually does not seem like too many. So it isn't so much the doll body count (within reason, of course. I will not allow myself to get any more than 24 total, and I don't know if I will ever reach that) but for me, it was all the plans of what I wanted to do with them that was frustrating me. I guess I have to admit that as much as I love creating, designing, pattern drafting sewing, etc, there can actually be too much demand on my creativity to be able to enjoy it without stress and strain.

So, basically I have one doll in the 1770s book ended by one doll in the 1970's. I have only 2 dolls sharing the 1910/20's. Everyone else is lumped into the 30's/40's/50's. And its perfect. Now I can make one pattern and I can dress 15 dolls with it instead of having to make 15 different patterns for only 1 outfit! 

The 'oh snap I thought it was done!' project

I have already posted the finished pics on both Facebook and Instagram, but I am just getting to actually blogging about it. This is an outfit that a friend of mine asked me if I would want to make. Her fiance pretty much designed it, and it is for their character named Daisy who is shelled in a pukifee. This is the first of several of Daisy's outfits that I will have the honor of bringing to life. :D The example she gave me was done on a computer, and it always presents an interesting and fun challenge to create a computer image in fabric and make it look like the outfit stepped out of the image into the real world.

The fabrics for this were very specific and needed to be shiny. (Shiny always means high maintenance to work with and also means an inevitable head banging moment of "whhhhyyyy?" for me at at least one point along the way. :P) I found the burgundy for the sleeveless tail coat (or tail vest?) in a lux cotton, a fabric I never had used before. (And the nice lady at the cutting table warned me it would ravel easily. She was so right.) The coat needed to be lined in gold, and I found that in a thin but what would prove to be too wiry to fold over the edges of the burgundy for a thin edging. (Number one head ache of the entire project. O.o) For the collar, the only thing I could find was a satin in cream, as I couldn't find the shade that was the actually bronzish color the outfit was designed originally to have. For the blue shirt, I had a satin that was woven in such a way that gave the color a tonal dimension to it. Next time I go back to the fabric store I am going to look back at what it is called precisely. And the pants I was lucky enough to find a shiny blue with glitter in the costume section. I didn't think it would go, but I snapped a pic as a just in case to send to my friend, and it was the perfect fabric! I went ahead and bought that before even hearing back from her on it in my first sweep of fabric searching as the bolt was close to being gone and it would have really sucked to have let it get away, just in case!

A little time went by as life happened, and when I went back to purchase the rest of my fabrics, to my utter horror, the beautiful blue fabric intended for the shirt was gone! Luckily, I made a trip to a town 45 minutes away that had it in stock. First tragedy avoided!

This outfit really had some sort of disaster mark on it. I always carefully put my current project fabrics in a container where I know where everything is. Well, when I went to find the glittery blue to sew the pants, that fabric had literally disappeared. :O I started working on other parts of the project and finally the fabric reappeared where I thought I had put it.

The pants were quite easy to make and went quickly. The sleeveless coat was pretty tricky. I literally spent hours figuring out the best way to sew it. I first had shoulders seams, but then I felt it was adding too much bulk, so I removed that. Then I had the issue with trying to fold up the lining over the raw burgundy edges to create that thin edging effect that I mentioned earlier. I had done this same technique on a coat for a 70cm doll, and while tricky, it was successful. It didn't work out quite so well on such a tiny tiny outfit. There are a lot of corners and tips that were too much of a challenge to do neatly. The parts I did manage to sew looked okay until I put it on the doll and noticed the wiriness of the fabric was causing it to bunch up in an unseemly manner. That was not going to work! So, I set it aside for a little bit to let it simmer in my brain to figure out a solution.

Next I worked on the shirt. I hand painted all the stars on it, and oh, it looked so pretty! The next step after putting the shirt together was to do the cuffs. These cuffs are made out of the burgundy with a cream ruffle and a gold embroidery. I sent my friend pictures of the embroidery stitch options, and she said she would confer with her fiance to see what he liked best for Daisy's outfit. Until I knew what embroidery stitch to use I wasn't able to test out the fit of the shirt as the sleeves and sides weren't sewn up, and I also wasn't able to see if the coat fit over the shirt correctly until I had a finished shirt to try it over. (Yes, I had done test pieces, but with certain types of fabric you can only truly tell when the pieces are sewn in the right fabrics.) I felt pretty certain though that I was nearly done and all I needed was to do the embroidery which was going to be oh so simple and then boom! Done! Right? Well, unfortunately, noooo. When they decided on the perfect embroidery stitch I set out to get it done quickly. What happened quickly was my discovering that the way I had planned to sew the cuffs didn't work as Lux cotton is temperamental (I really want to add an expletive here, but I won't..), and so I had to put more seams in it that I had originally wanted to which was my initial attempt to lesson the bulk. So, I had no choice but to redo that a few times until I thought that I had it right. When I tried it on, nope! The sleeves were too narrow to handle the thickness of the cuffs and so once I had it turned inside out (which nearly tore my nails off to do so) I couldn't even get them over my dolls hands. So, instead of trying to take the cuffs off the sleeves, I just cut the sleeves off as I swear there was no turning those sleeves inside out again. That meant redoing the shirt with all my hand painting as trying to take the cut off sleeves was not an appealing option and I also figured I would make a couple of minor readjustments that likely weren't even necessary. (The more I work on a project the more "mistakes" I imagine and that's when I need an intervention.)

Happily, redoing the shirt was actually not a big deal. (After I had to find that fabric as well that hid in the exact spot I knew I had put it in for a couple of days. :/)The cuffs went on with no drama. The coat finally came together in my head how to go about doing it, and as luck was *finally* on my side, I was able to find a tiny gold trim which my friend loved to go around the coat. :D The final thing was that ruffled collar. I honestly thought it would come together lickety split, but no. :( It had its own tricky kinks to figure out. It took me a few times of doing and redoing, but when it finally came together, it was magical!

 

The final step was closures and that bright red bow at the throat of the collar. Of course a little more suspense was due me in those final moments of creation. I didn't have the 1/8th red ribbon that I was going to use for it, which also was a happy mistake. I ended up take 1/4 inch ribbon and sewing the bow together from different pieces of ribbon - each tail was a separate piece, etc, and in the end it came together perfectly.

I was a happy, happy panda when I finally got it out in the mail! I was nervous and excited for her to get it. I was honestly a little terrified that something wasn't go to fit right, which of course I would have fixed. My bliss upon hearing that it arrived and seeing on Daisy herself was indescribable! Even though this one was a rough journey, I am looking forward to sewing for Daisy and her human keepers again. Only this time, I am going to be a little more aware of tricky fabrics for such a small scale and be much more prepared. :)

We decided it would be a good idea to just take a break from Flea Markets for awhile, kind of cut back on getting any more things. Just for awhile. That resolve I am ashamed to admit lasted all of 2 weeks -maybe - at the most. Not only did we go to one Flea Market this weekend, we went to 3. On Saturday we went to the one across the river. I struck out on anything MH or MLP, but to my absolute shock and delight I found a black teddy bear exactly like one I had gotten way back in 2001, if my memory serves me right. How often does one find a black teddy bear? I remember I had cut off that ugly bow it came with, replaced it with another one (whether I went with red or black, I don't remember), and sewed little felt vampire fangs on him. Unfortunately, he got ruined a few years later, and so I got rid of him with a heavy heart. Imagine my shock when I saw one in nearly perfect shape for all of $6? He does have some sticky residue on his legs, but nothing that a run through the washer can't fix. Dracubear is back! :D You bet I plan to resew on some fangs.

And then today we decided to get out of the house. It was a beautiful day in the 60's and it would have been a waste to spend it inside all day. At the first flea market, I did find a MH Jane Boolittle with great hair. She didn't come with any of her original outfit or accessories, but I went ahead and grabbed her since her hair was so good. Once I got out to the car and got to looking at her I noticed that her neck was broken at the very tip top :/ It was repaired with some sort of glue, so she is fine, but drat! Oh well, she was only $3, and since the neck repair was successful, I still got a nice doll. The only pony I could find was a hammered g3 (which I just googled to discover that its the 25th anniversary Toola Roola) paired with a g4. I went ahead and got it, though the poor pony needs some help.

Sorry for the big hand over the ponies - couldn't help it!

After a moment's debate we decided to go ahead and go to the other Flea Market which we seldom go to. We've gotten some good stuff there, but its usually pretty boring, so we pretty much just stick to the Consumer Mall. The first thing I found there was a 13 Wishes Cleo. :D :D :D. She has everything except her hair piece and her wrap. She's in great shape, and I can happily add another Cleo to the hoard! Next I found Twyla's pet Dustin. We were nearly done and I had given up on finding any more ponies (though it had already been a good weekend of flea marketing) when....drum roll....a stash of ponies was discovered! 4 bag fulls, to be exact. A mix of mostly g1s with some fakies and g3s as well. For $5 each! Now, I may or may not have smashed into a family member nearly knocking them to the ground before catching them in my thrill and mania of finding ponies. But, if that did happen, in my defense I WAS dodging a person and her cart who was in the way, and there WAS a bucket in my path that made me stumble just a wee bit before the collision occurred....If it did, that is. In the future, should another opportunity present itself and another treasure trove of ponies be found, I solemnly promise to handle myself with a little more measured calculation so that no innocent person be Teddy Bruschi-ed (as it was later called) again.

Bad pic, but here are my ponies right before their spa!

We ended up with quite a few ponies, though some of them were pretty stained up. The g1 s were: 2 Bluebelles, 2 Cotton Candies, 2 Mintys and a Snuzzle and the ones that I took - Steamer, Fifi, TAF Sundance, Sundance, Firefly, Twisty Tail, and a Dance and Prance pony DJ. The G3s were Wisteria, Daffidaisy, 25th Ann. Toola Roola (in fantastic shape) Princess Peppermint, and the ones that I took - Coconut Cream, Star Catcher II, and Piccolo. We split the fakies as well, and I ended up with a sitting lanard who I am crazy about, an early 2000's (maybe? Will research) Lanard and 2 other ones of unknown origin. I do like some phonies, so I think they are a fun addition.

Okay, this blog is getting pretty long already, but I have to share a little more about my new G1 additions. Steamer, Fifi, TAF Sundance, Twisty Tail and DJ all have numbers on their forheads, chests, rump and sides. It's a shame too because some of them aren't otherwise in too bad of shape. I had gotten a bag of ponies from that same flea market several months back that included 2 BBE babies, a ballerina pony, a flutter and a summer wing. All of those ponies except the summer wing had numbers written on them as well. Same style. I joked that these ponies were rescued from being a Cult sacrifice, and I wanted to find more of them. Imagine my surprise that I actually did just find more of them! I'm really thrilled. The highest number I have is '25' written on my TAF Sundance. I really hope there aren't 25 ponies damaged like this. One of the Minty's that I did not keep had a very thin black small number written on the chest, but none anywhere else. My Firefly also has a light number on the chest, but that was it as well. I would love to find the rest of them, but who knows if there are any more out there, if I missed more bags at the flea market, or if the rest of the ponies were sacrificed in flames decades ago. I'm going to get out my other Cult rescues to see which numbers I have and take a note of it.

And that concludes a week of some good solid Flea Marketing. Now, back to no more buying for awhile!