Monday, March 11, 2013

The ugly purple dress

Hi everyone!

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 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.


A good try, but I give it a huge thumbs down. The robe turned out way better...

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