YouTube Tuesday! Halloween 2012

First a quick note to all my loyal fans. My Granny (who is 92) injured her leg just recently and I'm on the Granny-Care rotation which means I will be spending at least 3 days with her this week and probably at least 3 next week, maybe 4. Her leg will be fine but as a loyal granddaughter my obligation is to help in her care and recuperation, which will probably last a couple of weeks before she can get around on her own again. Right now she's using a walker and sometimes a wheelchair. So anyway, family has to come first and I know y'all will understand when posts are hit and miss for the next couple of weeks. We have complete confidence that she will make a full recovery, but her knee is swollen right now and it's hard to walk on, which makes it hard to do everything else in life such as washing the dishes, hanging the laundry on the line, taking a bath or shower, cooking, getting from one room to the next, changing the channel on the TV etc. Until she's able to do for herself, I'll be on the rotation schedule along with my aunts.

Now onto our main theme. Our good and faithful and extremely talented HardyGirl66 has been working overtime on a brand new Halloween Video, that right, Brand New! She made a super video last year which I shared earlier this month. This month however, she has exceeded our greatest expectations! She has created the piece de resistance! The epic 1970's Halloween Extravaganza. You can check it out below. Also be sure to visit YouTube and leave her some feedback. Feedback feeds the imagination of our beloved YouTubers. If we want more videos we must feed the ones who create such treasures for our viewing pleasure. So be sure to let Sharry (aka HardyGirl66) know what you think of her 1970's Halloween Carnival!

YouTube Tuesday: Springfield Collection Sportswear

This is my Youtube Video of Springfield Collection Activewear & Sportswear. Hope you enjoy it!

All of these items are available from the Springfield Store, or Sunshine Crafts or your local craft store like Michaels or AC Moore. Since making this video there are a few other Sportwear items available, like ballet shoes and a new yoga outfit.

Make It Yourself Monday: Niya's Native American Outfit

AG doll Kaya -- Niya Dressed In My Pattern -- Niya Undressed



I wanted to share a pattern I've been working on the past week, but I didn't have it done in time, so I'm sharing a pattern that I has posted a few months back before the great delete of grief.

 

Free American Indian Dress Pattern

PDF File

 

 

I grew up with a very odd mixture of Native American culture, Fundamental Christian culture and Wicaan culture, which has given me an ecclectic world view as an adult. My great grandpa was Cherokee who was raised white, and his daughter, my Granny (now 92), decided as a girl to be mostly white, which was probably easiest for her, considering the times she lived through. She remains mostly white to this day, except when she goes to PowWow, when she is all Indian. My mom and my aunts are sometimes white and sometimes Indian, which after talking to other people of mixed heritage, I found out is pretty normal. I'm white. I know because when I tried to be Indian as a teenager I was imperiously informed by an Indian girl who was half and half that I was too white to be Indian. Then later, when I was at a powwow with my oldest son, who was 7 at the time and who thought being indian was the greatest thing he'd ever discovered, we were both informed by the PowWow leader that we were too white to be Indian. So, I'm not Indian, but some of my people are. Just like I'm not Wiccan, but some of my people are that too. Mostly I'm anabaptist, but that's neither here nor there.

 

My point to all of this background information is that I'm especially fond of Native American Culture and I thoroughly enjoyed the stories of the American Girl doll Kaya. A few years back Springfield used to make a native american doll named Niya. I plan on sharing her lost profile this Friday. She is the doll I used as my model for this pattern.

 

 

 

The pattern for Niya's clothes is my own invention, designed after looking at several patterns for Indian Princess doll costumes. The fabric was purchased on sale at my local fabric store. It took less than 1/2-yard for the dress and overlay. I think the material was intended as an upholstery fabric, but I could be wrong. It's stiffer than ultra suede, similar to microsuede, only not as expensive as most microsuede I've seen. The trim came from AC Moore. It's a cream colored cotton braid. I accented the front of the cape with small strips of red leather cord topped with a plastic gold bead. It was very challenging to sew through the red leather cord and if I had it to do over again I would choose yarn or even ribbon. Anything that is easier to sew. I only did 3 because it was so hard to get the needle through the red leather cord. The necklace is made from inexpensive glass beads strung on a thin elastic thread. I have a lot of them leftover from kid and craft projects over the years. The hair ornaments are big plastic buttons that were found on sale at Hancock fabrics about 15 years ago. They have lurked in my button tin until I rescued them for this project. I ran a short length of elastic thread through the button shank and then tied it and trimmed the ends. They fit on her braids like any elastic hair band would. The ends of her braids are tied with simple cotton string. Kiyah's boots are inexpensive Springfield doll boots I bought at a going-out-of-business sale at a craft shop in the late 90's. I stashed them with my doll stuff until bringing them out for this project.

The outfit I designed isn't associated with any particular tribe. It's modest and the cape gives it double coverage, which my inner anabaptist finds very pleasing. If you're making a historical character, this pattern can be made suitable for both Pocahontas and Sacajawea by using different colored fabric and varying the trim. I think an ecru or ivory fabric would be great for Pocahontas.  A darker color would do for Sacajawea since she is traveling. A baby in a papoose would be a fun and historically accurate addition to Sacajawea's ensemble. Felt is inexpensive and widely available at craft stores in 36-inch square yard packages. It is very easy to work with, especially for beginners. It would work perfectly for this dress.

You Tube Tuesday: 1970's Halloween Party

This is one of my absolute favorites of Sharry's Springfield Doll Videos. This has all the classic 70's accoutrements and the Ben Cooper Halloween costumes are a special treat. I had a Ben Cooper costume for a fairy princess when I was a girl. I felt like I was the most beautiful princess from a fairytale that the world had ever witnessed. I had all but forgotten how special and beautiful I felt in that princess costume. Sharry's video brought back that memory and so many more of Halloweens past. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did!

In case you're interested, here is the preview of the video, which gives you all the behind the scenes action!

Thanks for sharing Sharry!

Make It Yourself Monday: Free 18-inch Doll Patterns Online

When I started sewing for dolls I didn't even understand that things like patterns existed. After a few years of muddling about on my own I discovered that library books had patterns and that these patterns could be used to make doll clothes, usually much fancier than the items I had managed on my own. When I started using patterns I found a whole new world of fashion for my dolls. I could hardly fathom the avenues of discovery opening before me. After a couple of years of learning to follow patterns I realized that if I could find a pattern for a specific type of garment, I could make that garment for my doll. It was like inventing the wheel and the light bulb, all in one afternoon with my sewing basket.

My earliest avenues in sewing were accomplished with a needle and thread. I spent an entire decade learning all about how to use that needle and thread to make all kinds of doll clothes. It was slow going, but extremely accurate and it gave me a clear understanding of clothing construction. Learning to sew doll clothes was the best primer possible for learning to sew people clothes.

Since patterns were such an eyeopener for me I am eager to share them with others. Below you'll find a selection of free patterns that are available online.

American Girl Playthings offers all PDF versions for the original Pleasant Company historical patterns for Addy, Samantha, Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten and Molly. They are found on the Doll Dress Pattern Page.  I've made several of these and they seem to fit Springfield Dolls very well.

InfiniteFreedom.com provides a very nice dropped waist dress pattern in American Girl size on their Free Pattern & Sewing Challenges page. I've made this pattern several times. It goes together quickly and fits Springfield dolls nicely.

  

Sewing.org has lots of free patterns. On their Dolls & Toys page they offer 3 free PDF patterns to fit American Girl dolls, including fancy collars, a bib collar and a gorgeous Spring Dress. A good pattern for basic panties is included in the Spring Dress pattern set.

Stitch N Stuff provides a basic, easy doll shoe sized for 18-inch dolls.

Trillium Design has a doll T-shirt tutorial including a T-Shirt pattern. This is made from knit fabric. Good way to upcycle t-shirts your kids have outgrown.

New Green Mama provides it's own T-shirt tutorial and another T-shirt pattern. This is also made from knit fabric. This pattern does not have separate sleeves so it might be easier for beginners.

Liberty Jane patterns provides a free pattern for a Drawstring Dress. I haven't made any LJ patterns yet myself, but I hear rave reviews of them. They have other free patterns too including a t-shirt, polo shirt and swimsuit. They also offer free patterns for other 18-inch dolls including Carpatina and BFC Ink.

 

Sew Like My Mom has a free pattern for the sweetest, prettiest summer dress. She calls it the Katie Dress in honor of her niece. This dress has a sleeveless bodice, pleated skirt and for a designer touch an underlay of either rick-rack or piping. It closes in the back with a zipper. Melissa is a talented seamstress with a great imagination!

Carpatina provides a pattern for this cute Summer Dress. it's sized for Slender Body Carpatina or Magic Attic dolls, but they provide instructions for enlarging it for chubby Springfield Dolls or AG dolls.

YouCanMakeThis.com has several free downloads for 18-inch dolls. Most of them are based on the Twirls for Girls pattern. You must sign up to gain access to the downloads, but there's little trouble in that. The patterns are very well made and the instructions are a delight to behold. There are also Halloween and Christmas variations available for free download. These skirts would be a great way to use up scraps of fabric.

 

Piecelove.net (don't you just love that name, I want to turn that name into a cuddly blanket and crawl under it during a snow storm) Has an adorable dress that I call a Tulip dress because the skirt of the dress looks like upside down tulip petals to me. This is a great pattern for using up small scraps of fabric, of which I have an ever growing, overflowing box full. The instructions are as beautiful as the dress. Shannon is terribly talented and kind enough to share her projects with the rest of us.

Oliverands.com provides a free pattern for both a doll dress and a matching girls dress. The doll dress is on the last page of the pattern and teaches you how to make your own bias binding. This is a very  handy skill to learn. As you can see in the picture above, Oliver + S has paired their summer dress with a cute pair of Springfield Collection clogs.

 

 

 

Miss Maggie's Free 18" Doll Clothes Patterns can be found here. I have several free patterns for doll clothes and doll dresses, most in PDF format so they're printable. 

 

When I was learning how to sew I desperately needed patterns. I hope you enjoy this collection of doll clothes as much as I've enjoyed compiling it. I know there are some that I've missed, but I couldn't find them this time around. If you know of any other free patterns please share them in the comment section. Thank-you!



You Tube Tuesday: Fall Fashions

Here is my new video. I've taken pictures of the Springfield Girls modeling ensembles made from mixing and matching Springfield Collection doll clothing. I had a lot of fun shooting this series because I got to play dolly dress-up for 2 days straight. Most of the outfit are good for Fall, but a few are more appropriate for late-summer. Where I live, in the South, it's still warm enough to get away with these warm-weather ensembles.

 



While you're gearing up for fall you might want to check out these fun activities from the Springfield Style Club. They have several activities perfect for the Fall Fashion Scene:

Fall Fashion Runway Activity

Fall Fashion Collage

I hope the Style Club gets some fun new activities for Halloween or Harvest Festivals and Thanksgiving.

Make It Yourself Monday: Undies & Tankini



Two piece Tankini and Lacy Camisole with matching Undies



Tankini or Underwear, this easy pattern will make both. Like most dolly mommies I hate having naked dolly bodies everywhere I look. Now they can all be modestly covered while they await their fashions.

 

When I designed this pattern I had a few special requirements. First it had to be made from woven fabric, not knit fabric. I'm not especially handy at sewing knit fabrics and I wanted a pattern I could make time and time again, to me that meant it had to be made from simple woven fabric. Next it had to be easy for girls to put on and take off of the dolls all by themselves. Some underwear is fiddly for young girls to put on their dolls by themselves. I wanted this pattern to make child-friendly underwear because mastering the skill of dressing and undressing a doll is good for a child's self-esteem and also good for a busy mom's harried schedule. Thirdly, I wanted as few number of seams as possible, to make the sewing quick and beginner-friendly. Finally, the underwear had to be modest, but attractive and look like something that girls wear themselves. It took a bit of work, but I was pleased with my results.

 

The pattern I came up with fits Springfield Collection dolls perfectly. If you're dressing an American Girl doll you may need to adapt the pattern slightly for their larger waists. The underwear only has two side seams. The leg openings can be finished with a narrow hem or the raw edges can be zig-zagged and then covered with lace or rick-rack. The elasticized wasitband can be finished with a simple casing or the elastic can be stretched and sewn into place. I tried my hand at illustrating the steps of applying the elastic and y'all will have to tell me what you think of it. Do the illustrations make it easier to understand the 2 techniques or harder?

 

The camisole is one I designed years ago for smaller dolls and have sized it up and down many times for different types of dolls. This is the first time I've made it for 18-inch dolls and I was very pleased with the results. The camisole uses short lengths of lace or rick-rack for the shoulder straps. The top and bottom edges are zig-zagged and then covered with pretty trim. It closes in the back with Velcro or snaps.

 

After making the pattern a couple of times I realized that in different fabric it would make a great swimsuit, so I gave it and try and the results were excellent! Just a change in fabric and trim makes the underwear into Beach Wear!

 

Free Underwear & Tankini Swimsuit Pattern

PDF file

 



Closeup of Undies



Front of undies

 

Back of undies

Front of swimsuit bottom in underwear fabric and in swimsuit fabric.

The swimsuit pattern also makes good underwear, and the elastic might

be easier for beginners. The legs can be decorated or simply hemmed.

 

Back of plain underwear and swimsuit bottom

For fabrics, I found that lightweight cotton worked best for the underwear. I used bleached muslin and a thin floral print on white background. They both turned out nice. For the Tankini I used a slightly thicker fabric. The pink one pictured was made from a quilting-weight fat-quarter. The pattern used less than half a fat-quarter, so you could get at least 2 sets of underwear or two Tankinis from one fat-quarter. I think a gingham swimsuit with white rick-rack would be very cute and it would have a retro 1950's feel to it. Out of all the underwear I made, I admit that I liked the simple white ones the best. You could get really fancy with the undies and camisole if you wanted too, making them into something with more of a lingerie feel. In this case I would use white satin with white lace. Or even lightweight pink satin or cotton with white lace would be cute and stylish while being kid-friendly.

As always, if you make this pattern for your own dolls please share your results in the comment section. If you have photos you'd like to share, let me know and I'll help you include them if I can.



Official set supervisor, Mr. Poe.

Show and Tell Thursday: 2012 Dresses

Yesterday I commented about some of the new items in the 2012 Springfield Collection. It turns out that my local craft store (AC Moore) finally got in it's new stock of Springfield Collection Clothing. I had a coupon for $10 off a $30 order, so I got the 2 dresses and skirt & top for just over $20. I brought the items home and used some of my other Springfield Collection items to dress the up a bit.

 

 

For this outfit I added tights and white satin ribbon to the dropped waist. In this picture it looks prettier than it does in person. This is an attractive outfit and I can see how a 7 year old would really like it. For me, as a mom, a grandma and an adult, it misses the mark. In my opinion it would have been prettier if they had left off the white printed necklace and the gauzy overlay (which tends to get caught in the Velcro and develops pulls and snags). A simple, purple knit, dropped-waist dress would have been very pretty and easier to accessorize for mixy matchys . I would have liked it better if they had left off the printed necklace and the skirt overlay, leaving a plain dress.

Here is Gina, one of my personal favorite dolls, in one of my favorite Springfield Collection dresses. The top is velveteen, the skirt and sash are good quality satin. If you have a pearl bracelet that is people-sized, it would make a great necklace to go with this dress. I've paired this dress with white tights and red sparkly shoes. It would be equally pretty with black shoes or black tights. It would be appropriate for Christmas, New Years and Valentine's Day.

 

 

 

I really like this outfit. Extra brownie points for the designer. He/She did a great job. The top is really cute, the ruffle really gives it an extra splash of pizazz. I paired it with pink capri-length leggings, silver shoes and a silver scarf that I think has now been discontinued. You can still find it however, at CR's Craft. It's a great accessory and really picks up the silver accent from the shoes. The silver purse would be the perfect go-with.



This dress is my absolute favorite this year! It's extremely versatile, as  I've tried to illustrate in the pictures above. This dress can go from casual sporty, to retro to formal chic to trendy modest. I also tried it with the full black skirt worn over it, so that only the top part shows, and it becomes a cute zebra cami. I especially like how cute this dress is when paired with a bright color like the pink top in the center. It really pops with the color combination. I hope the 2013 collection brings us some stylish, versatile pieces like this one, and some bright new colors too!

My Olivia doll looks especially beautiful in this photo shoot. She has had her bangs trimmed short and her hair was trimmed and then curled under with curlers and a traditional boiling water Barbie-perm. This doll is older, at least 5 years old, and she looks great!

NOTE: If you are a child, DO NOT cut your doll's hair or do anything with boiling water without adult supervision. Let the grown-ups manage any boiling water perms or hair cuts.

* * *

Quick Update on the Zebra dress, while it's still a fashion favorite, it has already begun to fall apart. The ribbon strap on the right side is ravelling and coming off at both the front and back, and the bow stitched to the shoulder on the left side is hanging on by a thread. This is just after me playing with it for 2 days, dressing and undressing the doll maybe a total of 8 times. I'm an adult, and I play with my dolls like an adult. I'm very gentle. The ribbon straps should be attached more firmly so they are able to withstand more stress, or a different type of strap, one that is less prone to raveling should be used. Something the strength of shoestrings would work better than the satin ribbon. I got out a needle and thread and firmly reattached the frayed ribbon and both shoulder bows so that they won't go anywhere. It's an easy matter for me to do this and took less than 5 minutes, but not everyone is handy with a needle and thread. I hate to think that in a year this marvelous dress will be languishing in storage bins across the country because the straps have broken off and no one is able to stitch them back on.