Okay next up, I decided I was ready to
plunge into my new hobby of making doll clothes and had researched
the subject enough to realize that there are people on Etsy and eBay
making doll clothes and selling them! I thought, you know, not only
am I using the making of the doll clothes to practice sewing so I can
sew people clothes, but if I got any good, I could sell my doll
clothes. So my eventual goal is to get good enough to sell my stuff.
I don't anticipate that being any time
soon...
So here we are at the next attempt.
Joann's had a super-dee-duper pattern sale. For those of you who
don't know me, I absolutely cannot pass up a Joann's 99 cent pattern
sale. I stalk their ads, hound my aunt and show up at opening the
morning of the 99 cent sales. I love me some 99 cent patterns :)
Here's what I picked: McCall's M3900 [top middle pic]
So I got a cute dress and thought the
concept might be simple enough: bodice front, bodice back, skirt
front, skirt back, puff sleeves – simple right?
Except you forget that I am the Shaky Seamstress and while my bravado is extremely high, my skill is still quite low and my attempts quite shaky.
I started this project by picking the fabric. Check the About Me for my behind the scenes in my fabric stash :) Thank you to my sewing matriarchs.
I decided I wanted to use 2 of my coordinating fabrics – so I picked a heavier purple for the dress and bodice and a lighter white with purple dots for the sleeves. I even got cocky with this one and decided I wanted the skirt piece to be the purple with the white over it for a nice “2 skirt effect”...
I've got hiiiiigh hopes
I've got high apple pie in the skyyyyyyy hopes
Sigh...
So I laid out the fabric, put the pattern pieces down – remembered what I was cutting out of what – and cut out my pieces. Boy was I on top of the world!
I started sewing the pieces together, I
followed the instructions e.x.a.c.t.l.y. (or so I thought) I did the
bodice okay – no problems there. I even did a pretty good job on
the sleeves. I think I’m pretty good at gathering...more detail on
that technique later. I even remembered to put both pieces of skirt
together and follow the instructions for both...however, this is
where I began to lose it.
The first thing I did wrong was sew the
hems of the skirts together. I don't know why I did that , I think I
was not paying attention. I intended for the skirt to be 2 separate
pieces but because I sewed their hems together, what I ended up with
was a purple skirt piece sewed behind a white with purple dots skirt
piece. It looks like one is the front and one is the back...not
really what I intended. Well thats ok...I guess...its just a practice
piece, right?
Then I don't know what happened!
I know now how doll tops are made –
sewn flat. I have been interested in learning about this from Sewing
with Nancy – apparently she discusses this in some detail. I just
haven't yet. The idea is that you lay the sewn front and back pieces
(having been sewn together at the shoulders or something) and sew the
sleeve seam and the side seam as one. Its much flatter and convenient
when working with doll clothes.
Like this:
I had no idea of this technique when I
made this dress and really thought I followed the instructions
exactly. However, you can see from the picture that I did not sew the
sleeves in this fashion and then I couldn't figure out why there
weren't instructions for the sleeves! I'm a mess here!
Aside from the skirt piece being
connected when I didn't want it to be and the sleeves not being
sewn...at all, I also didn't like how “big” the dress seems on
the doll. I was really making tiny seams at this point and the dress
just seems overall too big for her.
Okay, check it out – let me know what you think.
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