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. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment