I bought Barbara Schoenoff’s In the Style of Queen Anne pattern as a birthday gift to myself (two birthdays ago, at least, maybe more) and although I’ve admired it greatly I haven’t gotten around to giving it a go until now. I don’t know why I have this freak-outedness that goes with doing someone else’s pattern but I’m fine drafting and sewing my own. The pattern and instructions are wonderful, it would take a concerted effort on my part to mess up.

This is my progress so far. I deviated by embiggening the nose, leaving the hair bun off (for now at least, I’m still contemplating hair) and needle sculpting the face. I couldn’t find the right sized wooden beads in my craft stash but I happened to have the right sized glass pearls on hand.

I think the glass pearls work well for the joints. There’s something very compelling about the way they peek out from the muslin.

Tomorrow there will be (in theory at least) gesso and paint and the making of clothes, but tonight I’m just going to revel a little in my progress.

That’s right, relax and revel.

I’m going to assume that breeding conditions are less than ideal in the craft room because it stopped reproducing.

The timing was great though, because I usually don’t think that much about stuffing, and there are tons of people that know far more about what to use and how to use it that were willing to point me in the right direction. And as it turns out there are a lot of stuffings available at Christmas time sold as snow decoration that really aren’t readily available during the rest of the year.

I was also pointed to an awesome video for learning how to properly stuff a doll using hemostats.

The bunnies above were filled with Silky Soft, produced by Fairfield (the very same makers of regular poly-fil) it’s super bouncy and feels baby fine in comparison to the normal stuff. It doesn’t pack tightly, so when I overstuffed a tiny head and left it on the table, I’d return to find white polyester brain matter oozing out the neck hole. I bought this stuff before I had the the sense to ask the experts, but fortunately it’s perfectly appropriate for my squishy little toys.

Then there’s poly-fil, it looks loftier but packs densely. Using the hemostat technique I attempted Mikey from Beautiful Animal Dolls by Miriam Gourley. My Mikey’s skin is just cotton flannel, since JoAnn’s is all I really have for a fabric store there’s no proper wool felt to be had offline, but the thinner skin made a great test for the stuffing and technique. The hemostats really did make all the difference in the world and he’s not nearly as lumpy I feared he would be.

And he stands!

I also picked up a 50/50 rayon (from extruded bamboo) and polyester fiber (Nature-fil by Fairfield) and I guess I’ll be grabbing some of the Eco(-fil? I can’t remember) made from Ingeo (extruded corn) fibers when it goes on sale after Christmas but I have yet to try those out.

I get a little kick out of watching my flock increase.

I carefully go over my chalk lines with a running stitch so that I can see the lines from either side of the fabric.

Once marked, I finish by hand using a tiny back stitch. If you want to try to do this part on a sewing machine I highly recommend you take Aunt Maggie’s advice and use a treadle machine so that you have better control over the speed and direction of the stitch. I tacked small snaps (size 0/4) by hand as the back closure.

Here’s a finished dress made from the base pattern. Little changes to the neckline, or the addition of sleeves or even adding a small amount of trim will give your doll a whole new look, so hold onto your pattern; you can use, alter and reuse it to embiggen your doll’s wardrobe.

]]> http://pointysticks.net/2011/08/14/dressing-up-travel-dolls-part-3/feed/ 0 http://pointysticks.net/2011/08/14/dressing-up-travel-dolls-part-2/ http://pointysticks.net/2011/08/14/dressing-up-travel-dolls-part-2/#comments Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:40:24 +0000 Wendy http://pointysticks.net/?p=919 Cleaning up patterns the first time around can be a little intimidating, it really is just a matter of going through the right steps with the right tools.

The muslin pieces are so small and floppy they need to be stiffened up in order to facilitate tracing. Fusible interfacing works, so does buckram and fabric glue; my all time favorite is freezer paper.

Freezer paper is cheap, multipurpose and comes in fairly large quantities. It usually takes me two or three years to use up an entire roll. The heat of the iron will fuse the plasticized (shiny) side to whatever surface its facing, so I always cover my ironing board and use a bit of scrap fabric as a pressing cloth to protect my iron.

Then I trim out the pieces and trace them. Graph paper isn’t a necessity, but it does make life a little easier. Starting with the front piece mark a center line, line up with the center of the pattern piece and trace lightly around. Right away you’ll see that my lines are a little wonky, to correct this I mark the center line on the freezer paper side of the pattern, line it up again and trace lightly right over the first tracing.

With pencil I mark with dark lines where the two tracings agree. If I only use only the outside lines the piece will be too loose, and inside lines will make it too snug. I have go somewhere in the middle so I break out a french curve and go somewhere in the middle. Then I give the sides the same treatment, only instead of flipping the muslin over, I’ll flip and swap the left over for the right for both tracings. This is where I can also safely play the neck line and add a mild curve to the bottom of the bodice.

I also added 3/8ths of an inch to each back seam. If you’re keeping track, only the shoulder seams and the very back seam have anything resembling a seam allowance so far.

I like to keep my original in pencil in case I need to make further corrections. I trace, scan or copy (depending on size and my relative cheapness for the day) a mock up onto paper and tape them together. Then I put the test piece on my model and make sure it fits like I think it should.

At this scale, I allow myself to be fussy. On small pieces even the smallest of mistakes will show up as glaring faults. Since my model is a doll she’s not going to mind a series of test fits. My paper pattern went right together without needing corrections. I’m feeling ambivalent about this success because I thought it would be cool to show how to make corrections at this point. (If you need to make corrections, draw right on the taped up pattern, then transfer those marks to your original, copy and try again.)

I traced all three pieces on the same plane, so that I could transfer the whole pattern to cloth with a minimum of waste. It doesn’t have to be done this way, it’s just my personal preference.

I’m using dressmakers transfer paper to mark up my cloth, but instead of a transfer wheel I use a ball point stylus to trace.

Once traced, I use pins to line up the corners and secure into place.

Some travel dolls will have staples holding their clothes onto their bodies, those tend to be the ones actually dressed by the manufacturer.

Others (like the one pictured) are more often found in handmade outfits, the pink skirt of the dress is made from ribbons carefully stitched together, the rest of the dress is tiny bits of ribbon and lace fitted together with hand stitching and the main material of the chicken leg bloomers is a single piece of skirt belting under all that lace. These dolls were often sold naked in sewing departments so it’s not all that unusual to find them sewn, tied, glued or even crocheted into their outfits.

I try to be as careful as possible when removing the old clothes especially when they are handmade as I always seem to learn something about the construction as I’m deconstructing.

Once the doll is bare I cut the rubber band and remove the head and to make cleaning easier.  Old glue, oils, dust and dirt will yellow any new clothes, so it’s a good idea to gently wash the arms and body after dehairing the head.

To remove the hair I use warm water. Warm, not hot– and no soap. The paint on most of these beauties is pretty durable, but there’s no reason to risk it. Their eyelashes (if they have any) are a different matter so I’ll remove those by careful prying before starting the washing and then wash them separately and carefully glue them back on when I’m done with the rest of the head. The one I’m working with doesn’t have lashes so I get to skip that step. I start with lukewarm water and work at the edges of the glue with my fingers, gradually increasing the warm tap (or decreasing the cold) until the glue rolls up and off of of the plastic cleanly. Once the hair and glue is completely removed you can stop the clean up there, but I like to use a very diluted solution of mild dishsoap and a scrap of t-shirt to wash all the parts, and then rinse clean in lukewarm water.

Once the doll is dry and restrung I think the impulse is to immediately go to work on her hair and then worry about costume. I do the opposite and start patterning costumes first since I’ve ruined a lot of nice hairstyles while fitting and dressing. Hair will have to wait anyway as my little box o’ mohair suffered the ravages of a vicious moth attack in storage and I haven’t bothered replacing it yet.

Despite any impressions given to you by home economics teachers that didn’t know any better; making a muslin pattern for anything off of a model (doll or human) is super easy. Since these dolls aren’t too busty there’s no need to be complex: front and back will do. I cut a piece of muslin just large enough to fit all the way around the doll plus about an inch and a quarter to allow for a proper fitting. For the arm holes I cut slits that look about right to fit from armpit to shoulder, plus an extra 1/8th inch at the top for the shoulder seams. Under the slits I dotted marks to represent the side seams. I used tiny tailor tack stitches along the back to get a good temporary closure and marked the lines for the arms and neck. If I wanted to dress her in a western shirt-dress I’d put the closing seam in the front. From there its just a matter of basting the sides inwards to fit my model, snipping the tacks, and cutting away the excess cloth.

Now I have a tiny pattern with no seam allowance. The reason for this is that once I trace out and correct those lines, I’ll probably trace the new pattern directly onto the cloth I select and stitch the pieces together before trimming the seams. 

It may sound counter intuitive to sew first and cut later, but at this scale it will keep the needle from pushing the raw edges down into the needle plate and fraying the heck out of the fabric (and my nerves.) By no means though is my way the only way, I could stabilize the crap out of fabric with starch or iron on interfacing or even slip a couple pieces of wax paper, vellum or wrapping tissue around the seams and tear away the paper when I’m done sewing. I just like my way, but if you’re going to give it a go– try a few different ways and figure out which technique makes you feel the most confident and gives the best results. That’s still a few steps away though.

June.

(Sob.)

Snow.

(Sniffle.)

Get this– next month, on the 3rd, a yarn shop is going to open up here in town. I’m so excited. The only way I could possibly be more excited about a yarn shop opening would be if it were staffed by Tom Waits (because somewhere in my mind, I just know Tom Waits would stock the most kick ass pattern books ever.)

I’ve made it a habit to avoid embroidering as much as possible.

Not that I don’t like embroidery, not at all because I really do like it. I think its my fear of unfinished projects. There were a lot of unfinished counted cross-stitch and crewel work kits in our house during my most tender and formative years.

Currently I’m working on stitching designs on pieces of flour sack towel, destined to be apron pockets.

Moving right along then. In keeping with my current thing of making creatures out of garments– sock frogs! Frogs made of socks. One of these days I’m actually going to get around to making a classic sock monkey.

Lilly pad or sock drawer?

My soft sculpting techniques need some refinement but I’m quite proud of my long neglected embroidery skills.

The frog on the right (the one with the spots) was my first attempt, I think he came out pretty darned cute. I changed the placement of the feet for a more comical effect on the 2nd one (the one with the big purple stripe.)

I’m loving how articulating the seam at the toe of the sock makes for those big content smiles.

Lucky kitty with fish

This little guy started life as a pair of knit gloves.

Usually I find stretch gloves perfectly useless as gloves but I haven’t made a softie in a long time and the idea of a maneki neko was way too tempting to resist.

The paw holding the fish is the thumb of the glove, and the waving paw is the ring finger. I cut the head from the palm portion of the other glove. The tips of the amputated fingers are what I used for the nose and feet. There’s no tail because this is a Japanese cat.

The fish is just quilting cotton. Its just this side of 2 inches long, and the tail was a pain to turn. The fish eyes are just French knots.

I had to play with the position of the nose for quite a while, which probably took me longer to get right than actually sewing anything. It kept looking as if I was going to end up with a waving fish holding polar bear with cat ears.

I have a serious phobia of waving fish holding polar bears, so I’m very relieved that my cat finally took a proper kitty shape.

naked 6 cup amsterdam teapot

Matt is moving his studio back to the house, which means that the space I appropriated for sewing had to be returned to it’s owner. I know, poor me. Fortunately, once we got around to moving my stuff back inside the house I was able to set up my cutting table and one of my machines to my satisfaction.

I may break down a little, having access to only one of my four machines. I mean, I think I can make due. If I have to.

fully clothed teapot

At least I was able to get to most of my stuff last night so my teapot need not suffer the embarrassment of not having a new summer ensemble. I used cotton red ticking as the liner, and some printed cotton green plaid for the exterior.

I love plaid.

This is just the prototype, I’m going to re-cut it with a bit of a curve to the bottom so the base of the teapot don’t keep peaking out, but I’m actually very proud of the fit on the top. And the real tea cozy will have cotton batting between the layers.