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! 

WIP American Girl Victorian Dress

After having been laptop-less for quite awhile, its nice to be able to blog again! This post's subject is the WIP Victorian I started some weeks ago. Between my ribbon conundrum and life happening, its just been sitting there for weeks.

This is my inspiration pic.

The salmon color is quite hideous. I didn't want to make an exact copy, so I went through my fabric hoard to pick out what I thought would be a good fit both for the pattern and also for the intended doll, which happened to be my beautiful Nicki I got as a gift on Halloween. I went with a floral pattern on white. Since white lace would just be lost on the white fabric, I decided to go with a pink ribbon and do some sort of fancy ribbon work for the trim. Ribbon work isn't something I really do, so I had to decide exactly how I wanted the trim to look, and then find a good tutorial that explained how to accomplish it.

First I went with a darker pink - not dark dark, but more I guess of a medium rose pink - ribbon an inch wide. I really had a hard time trying to find any decent tutorials searching on my phone. Now on a laptop, I can find quite a few of them! What I originally tried to do did not work. Not only was I not pleased with the affect of my sad attempt at a fancy trim, I wasn't really liking the pink color of the ribbon. So, back to the store I went and got this time a paler 1/2 pink. The simplest thing to do, I decided next, was to simply pleat the ribbon. I love the affect combined with the fabric of the dress. :D

So far I have the ribbon on one cuff and the bodice. I started adding it last night to one of the top curved collar  pieces that surround the pin tucked yoke. Its a bit of a challenge to neatly curve it while keeping the pleats steady. I have a feeling that I am doing this the hard way. There's probably a technique to this that I am not using. I'll have to do more research to see what I can learn on the proper way of doing ribbon work. Here's all the pieces I have left to trim:

I went ahead and sewed the pin tucked yoke to the bodice piece before I actually needed to, but I wanted to see how it looked. I will take it back off, and add the other pieces to it, then sew it all back together.

In a true confession, I think I rushed the drafting/testing process with this dress. I'm seeing a couple of issues where I didn't think it through as carefully as I should have, where I should have been more cognizant of bulk, etc. Hopefully though, everything will go together neatly, and I'll be happy with the finished process. If it all comes together right, my Nicki is going to look absolutely gorgeous in it!



 

Assessing my AG needs....

I have to run some errands today, but I wanted to get in a little dolly time before I leave the Crypt  and venture out amongst the living. I decided to get out my AG girls. Its been awhile since I had them all out together. Presently I am keeping them safely stored away in boxes for the most part. I have a couple out, who are holed up in the 3 bottom cubes of the MH cubicle shelf turned house. I like keeping Myrtle out, even if everyone else has to be put up. Myrtle is both my top favorite and my sewing buddy. I don't have to worry about her hair, since its short. Which is seriously convenient! Here's my list of my present AG dolly needs:

Myrtle (#21 with a bob hair cut.)
Outfit - check (I got her Kit's school dress when I was at the AG boutique in Nashville.
Shoes and socks - check
Undies - check

Ginger - Rebecca with Marisol wig
Outfit - check (2 actually, even if they are the same pattern...and both green. Just different shades.)
Shoes and socks - NEED She has socks she can borrow, but nothing perfect for her
Undies - Check. And 2 crinolines as well

Luna - Mattel Josefina
Outfit - NEED. I started working on one back in the Summer, but have not had a proper time to work on it
Shoes and socks - Socks Check. I got her AG sock set that she is admittedly sharing with her sisters. Shoes - She has Kirsten boots that work, but I would like to get her something more.
Undies - NEED. Also WIP.

Lunasadh - Lea with Saige wig
Oufit - Check.
Shoes and socks - NEED. I plan to get some sparkle silver flats. Its hard to find the right shoes for a medieval fantasy doll for some reason, lol.
Undies - NEED. See above reason.

Delphine - #53 with black Bova International wig
Outfit - Check! My goth girl has one outfit
Shoes and socks - Check. She has boots and is using the black Josi socks.
Undies - Check.

Claudia Higgins - Jess with Lea wig
Outfit - sort of check. She has a piece mealed outfit, but I want to make her a proper Mori ensemble.
Shoes and socks - sort of check. She has shoes I like, but aren't perfect enough to be her only pair.
Undies - NEED

Georgie - BF Rebecca
Outfit - Check! Her Meet.
Shoes and socks - Check! For now I'm content with the boots I have for her
Undies - Check!

Thistle - #61
Outfit - Check! She's my best off. Thanks to my stash of Halloween tees and the ghost dress I made her
Shoes and socks - Check for socks, sort of check for shoes. She has some that work, but I need to get her the Halloween sneakers.
Undies - Check.

Lucinda - Marie-Grace
Outfit - Check! She actually has 2 dresses. Lucky girl.
Shoes and socks - NEED. She has Kirsten boots, but I want her meet stuff. She's using Josi socks.
Undies - NEED. I did make her some pantaloons, Luna just won't give them back.

Henrietta - Grace with #61 eyes and Saige wig
Outfit - NEED. She has reindeer PJs at least.
Shoes and socks - NEED
Undies - NEED

Bebe (Bianca) Josefina with MG wig (missing the curlets)
Outfit - NEED. She is wearing something, but its not HER.
Shoes and socks - See above
Undies - NEED
Additional needs - Glasses. Right now she is flirting with an eye strain headache. Myrtle can relate from when she lost her glasses.

So, there's the list. At this moment in time sewing for me isn't going to happen until I get caught up with commission work after 6 weeks or so of being sick. This gives me time though to decide what I want to make for my clothesless girls. Planning is so much fun! :D

2017 is going to be an exciting year for AG!

I'm extremely excited with what AG is doing this year. I had not foreseen the return of Felicity. I really try not to frequent AG groups because, to be honest, all the constant negativity on them can really drain me. If people want to bicker and complain, that's fine for them, but for me I find it can really put a damper on my own enjoyment of the hobby. The down side of that is I often miss out on news and leaks! So, imagine my surprise when I - late to the party as usual - noticed they were unarchiving Felicity! I love this doll and her time period. I don't necessarily love AG's most recent (back before they archived her) additions to her collection, and do expect about the same for her re-release, but it doesn't really matter. I'm thrilled. I'm quite happy also that the dreadful neon green eyes are not coming back with her. I find the color charming on the older Felicity dolls. It's a feeling I finally developed after they archived her - kind of a nostalgic attachment, you could say. I will definitely be buying the new Felicity at one point this year. She's far too pretty to pass up, and its freaking FELICITY. :D

I'm also excited for Tenney. Relieved to find that the new hand shape doesn't look like the doll's version of the Possessed Hand. It looks strange, but not terrible. I LOVE the way she looks. Her hair is lovely, and the freckles are super cute. She will be joining my family hopefully in the near future!

Of course, the doll holding the most intrigue for me is Logan. That AG is finally making a boy doll is beyond awesome. I just hope that he looks right. Meaning, for me, a lot of times when doll companies make play doll boys, they just look so aesthetically different from the girls that it bugs me. I think I will love him. I can't imagine AG making a clunky hideous un-AG looking doll. It's not too far off before we will all finally be able to see him! The 7th (if that date ends up being the correct one) is quickly approaching!

Rambling blog of much ado about nothing

Yes, I am blogging instead of doing what I need to be doing - the dishes, picking up the room or finish making the paper poppies I volunteered to help with, but I just got back from a very long string of errands and sitting on my ass feels nice. I'm freaking excited though - our MH order came in at Wal-Mart!!! I can't wait to open the playsets and the beautiful WtMH Lagoona. I grabbed Cleo's vanity set for a Best Offer of $19 off of eBay. It appears to be moving at a snail's pace. and being that tomorrow is Veteran's Day, it won't get here tomorrow after all. Dang! I can't wait for it to get here. It is such a neat set. I just love the MH playsets. :D 

At Hobby Lobby there was a little spattering of Halloween stuff left at 80% off. Yay! We grabbed a few things, which included this awesome mummy coffee cup. Which I will be using tomorrow morning. I'll get a picture of everything if I remember to and add to this blog later. They had these neat little metal buckets with lids on them for $0.40 which I passed on due to the scratches they seemed to all have. I'm wondering now if I should have gotten them any ways....I have no idea what I would have done with them, but I would have found something for them.

At Joann's I got some fabric for the AG 1950's Christmas dress I have in the works, and some more coat fabric. As well as the lavender cotton and lace for the Lolita dress I sold on Etsy. 

We also went by the movie rental place and got 3 movies for the weekend. I am vegging all weekend I swear. Beyond the important stuff such as meals and dishes - nothing. Nada. I am going to be lazy as all hell, so movies will be a nice distraction. 

Okay, that should wrap up this pointless post! I plan to do more MH doll blog reviews. I have the pics for several, just haven't done them yet. Now, off to the dishes!

Ginger's 1950's Skirt and Tee

I decided to finish up Ginger's tee shirt and skirt set. Finishing up the tee took me longer than I had expected, but I got it finished up around lunch time. I worked on her circle skirt next. After I got it together, I decided to look for some inspiration pics of something to applique on the skirt, a la poodle skirts. I found a lot of cute ideas looking at actual patterns from the '50's. Along with the iconic poodle, I saw cats, flowers, fish, donkeys, dogs (other than poodles,) and even doves. Several of them, complete with a birdcage! The latter was on an adult woman's skirt, but I thought "why not?" I attempted to draw out a dove shape that resembled what I saw on the real skirt and cut one out of white felt to sew on Ginger's skirt. I lined it with tiny stitches in a tannish gold around the edge of the bird. I still need to add the eye. Besides that and the snaps, her outfit is done. And in a bad, bad need of a crinoline, slip, or something of that nature! Here's some unexciting pics of her snapped quickly outside.

Please excuse Ginger's hair. I need to glue her wig on and give it a nice brushing. In her hair is the matching scarf for her to wear either around her neck or in her hair. Right now it is simply pulling her hair back.

I really enjoyed making the circle skirt. It's simple and fairly quick, though hemming it around the bottom edge is a pain as its so curved. I plan to make her many more in this style with various appliques! I'd love to maker her one with cherries, so I will keep an eye out for the right fabric.

I  have also started on a 1950's style of coat. Right now it is getting the best of me, but I'll get it. At one point it will have to get cold here, and having a coat for Ginger will be really nice. Next in line for her is a nice dress. She's kind of my focus right now, which is fun!

A tale of rick rack - AG Cecile's Red Dress from her paperdolls....

I got a custom order via Etsy for Cecile's red dress from her paperdolls as well as MG's Polka Dot dress. I can talk about the polka dot in a separate blog. For some reason I think I might have already blogged it....

Cecile's dress - its a handful. I'm titling this blog post 'a tale of rick rack' but maybe I should title it 'a tale of pointy tips and how to get them to hang right.' This dress was honestly, the trickiest AG dress I can remember to date working out a pattern for. The bodice itself is easy, and the skirt is straigh forward. It's the peplum and the sleeves that led to those "AGH!" moments.

You can see on the illustration how Cecile's hand covers the front of the peplum, so I tried to fill in the blanks as well as I could, mimicking the sleeves form. You can also see how there is no break in the rick rack trim going from bodice to peplum. It is an illustration, yes, and those things can be tinkered with to make the sewing actually work, but in this instance it did need to be done as shown here due to the difficulty it would cause to try and line it up perfectly after cutting the rick rack into 2, not to mention creating unnecessary bulk.

The peplum was a fun challenge, getting the shape right and also getting the hang right. I wasn't sure if it needed a light gather, but pretty quickly decided that would look very wrong. The sleeves I had to re-do more than once as my first attempts were gathered just enough to make them look a little bit like bird wings. Lol. That didn't work. So, I took out some of the gather, shortened the layers a little as well. That worked really well.

My beautiful Luna is modeling the pictures of my dress here. I wish I had taken the time to get good pics of it, but as soon as I finished the dress I wanted to get it out to the PO immediately. I will make another one for my own dolls to fight over. (Luna has decided she needs to wear 1850's dresses, Henrietta is screaming it should be hers, and I will at one point be getting a MG in a trade, which neither girl presently realizes. :P)

Went to Nashville yesterday, visited the AG store!

Which is about 2 1/2 hours from where we are staying. They have an AG store there at the mall, so we were really excited to get the chance to visit. For some reason we had this hair brained idea that we could stop by there on the way to KY on our move here - yeah right. Like we' re going to even want to stop there on a 4 (and it ended up being a 5) day move? It was a fun thought initially, but I am definitely glad we waited.

We got a pretty early start, fueled up on gas and coffee (32 oz cup for me!) and we were on our way. My Freya (a gift from a friend - thank you so much - you know who you are!) came along with me. She's been rather needy since her arrival. She's wearing a Blythe dress that no one else is needing, and I think it looks cute on her. Blythe clothes are slim picking 'round these parts as sewing for them seems to always end up on the bottom of the stack of priorities. Eventually I will get my Freya named, and dressed in clothing special for her. I'm just not sure what that is at the moment, so she will stay as she is for now.

We got to the mall around 11:45 -ish, just in time for lunch. We brought along deli meat (sun dried tomato roasted turkey is really good) for sandwiches, and once food was downed, off we went.

The Cool Springs Galleria mall is quite large. A 2 story. We came in the mall through Macy's, and once we located one of those mall map thing a ma bops, found that the AG place was in the upper story and all the way on the other side of the mall. Like I said, it was a big mall, so it was quite the walk to get there. I wanted to stop by Hot Topic of course to check out what goodies they might have (I miss the one here, which closed down years ago.) They were having a store wide sale (yay!!) and I looked pretty quickly and ended up heading on to the AG store with the intent to come back later on to make my purchases.

The AG store there is really fun. It's all one level, as opposed to having the Bitty Babies and modern girls on the bottom floor like they had in D.C. (Actually, Tyson's Corner in VA.) I prefer the one floor. There were a good spattering of customers, but it wasn't too terribly crowded. The employees could hover annoyingly at times, but again, not too terribly bad. (I had one employee do the "Oh, I just love your coffin bag!" as she obviously craned her neck to make sure I wasn't stealing. *sigh* I totally understand why she would do that. I made sure she saw the inside of it to see for herself there was nothing underhanded going on. Why do people have to steal things?) I took a few pics of Freya checking out all the models and displays. Here is my favorite. I think she found a friend she wanted to take home with her. Maybe next time.

I ended up getting some fun stuff on my second trip to Hot Topic. (I know I took forever. It's not a big store, but the really low lights makes it hard to see everything, lol.) I got 2 awesome awesome sweaters with skulls on them (one is long and black, the other is a cream and black stripe) 2 bottles of nail polish, and 3 sets of jewelry.

While I was walking along, I saw a child - probably around 7 maybe? - point at me. Totally normal. I don't mind. Recently I had a 3 year old boy point and me and say "Look, a bat!" (Not sure how I resembled a bat, but I was like "aw, he called me a bat!") I never know what I'll hear, but something along that line, or maybe just a gasp. But this child? She pointed at me, and then, here it came. "Mommy, look, an EMO!" Emo??????? Seriously? I have never been called that before. I guess that's her title for black make up and clothes? (It's not completely untrue, but still, I am no emo.) *face palm* Ah well, what do kids know?

Next came the drive to Bowling Green where we got lost trying to re-find the restaurant of choice for dinner. The food was terrible. That's one thing we'll have to re-adjust to. Around here, there are no decent Mexican restaurants. It's not exactly the right demographic for people to really have much appreciation for good Mexican food. It's okay, though. I truly do not enjoy eating out, and since I am here, if I must, just give me some Long John Silvers, and we're good. :D

Some more pics from the AG store:

I love Mary Ellen more than I expected to. I think she might be coming to live with me at one point!

The American Girl Lolita Project

I started sewing AG Lolita clothing about 2 years ago, lost interest in the dolls, and pretty much phased out sewing for them. (I kept one doll as I am still working on some historically more accurate Marie-Grace dresses for someone I met on the AGPT forum a couple of years back by responding to her WTC for this project. She has since become very dear penpal.)

Before Christmas I got a message on Etsy from a lady who was looking to have some dresses made for her AG doll. She had recently fallen in love with Loli fashion herself. As someone who loves Loli fashion for dolls, meeting a like minded dolly owner is always a treat! After discussing some ideas with her, she settled on going with the pattern I had already made, only instead of the pale butterfly print I had sewn it in before, she was looking for a pale icy yellow solid. You'd think that would be a simple thing to find, but alas, butter yellow is what is so easily found right now. Colors really trend through the years. I was finally able to find ONE option, which thankfully turned out to be perfect.

Here is the dress. I couldn't be happier with it.

My buyer wanted to add some pigtail bows to match it. She is also wanting a large single pony tail bow. I had meant to have this finished by the time she got back from vacation, but I had forgotten to settle on the exact size with her before she left. I want her input before I sew the actual bow for her.

The second dress is pretty much her brain child. It was fun seeing the dress come together. We started with an example of a human dress, and it went from there! She wanted it in lavender with a lavender print. I LOVE this fabric combination. This dress will also have the pig tails bows, and the still unmade single bow.

I am presently working on the third dress, the pink. It'll be made out of a pink printed with little white vines with hearts mixed with a pale pink solid. The bodice will be pretty simple, but the skirt is more of a challenge. I'm really wanting it to have several ruffles, so I'm working on some concepts to see what is possible and what is not. Hopefully I can post some WIP pics of this design soon!