More human sewing

 I've been avoiding my dolls a bit lately. The two Iplehouse girls I ordered at the end of last year, still haven't arrived. And working on doll stuff, makes me think about it, then I get all cranky wondering when or if they're coming.

Instead I've been sewing for Tiny.

This is the first dress I made. She's worn it a million times, but somehow this is the best picture I have of it. And since then, I've had to lengthen it, because she finally grew.
It was my first attempt using piping and turned out better than expected but was fiddly to do.

I don't have a good picture of this one either. But I'm not really happy with it. But since I don't have much experience with working with knit fabric, it's ok. It's a sort of cord effect stretch velvet. In hindsight I probably should have made the pattern a little smaller because of the stretch. I didn't though, and it looks a size too big for her. I also made a little needle woven flower to go on the yoke, because it felt too plain. But the flower curled up when it was washed and looks like a dead spider now. I can probably fix that by tacking down the tips of the petals though.

This dress is loud but adorable. The hem doesn't actually stick out the way it does in this picture. It hangs in lovely drapey folds. The only issue is, it tends to make her look skinnier than she is, which freaks me out.

 This is probably the best dress I've made so far. And it's super warm and soft and cute. But I really need to stop making things in cream and white, because kids are messy and do silly things like "wash" their sisters with handfuls of dirt.
Oh well, at least it isn't the old days when kids wore white cotton or muslin a lot, and their poor mothers had to wash everything by hand without modern laundry products!

This dress was made from some old cushion covers! It's got a honeycomb smocking effect on the front but I couldn't find thread that quite matched the fabric, the frills are the wrong length, and lined with the wrong colour. I did have silk that matched the colour of the dress fabric that I wanted to line the frills with, but I had used most of it for something else last year, and didn't have enough left.

This picture shows the front better but also a lot of biscuit crumbs and how messy the construction is. Lol.

I don't have a single picture of Tiny in this dress. It's her favourite. It's not mine. It's ok. Somehow, it turned out way too big, even though it was the same pattern I used for the loud dress, which fits beautifully.
This is made from the wrong fabric. What does that mean? I ordered fabric from Spotlight. It was this print but in off white with the pattern in grey and blue. They sent me this, much louder version. I sent it back. They said they'd send me the right fabric. And sent me more of the wrong fabric. I complained. So they sent me MORE of this wrong fabric! Except the entire process took two and a half months and now instead of two and a half metres of lovely, muted, fairly neutral fabric, I've got five metres of loud, gaudy, almost Christmassy fabric! And Spotlight's response was "Yeah, we've got no idea what happened. That isn't what you ordered. Have a nice day!"

 This last dress isn't quite finished. I need to neaten  the facing and put a press stud at the top. I don't know how I feel about it. I was going for an Edwardian kind of look but looking at it hanging there, it looks very Brady Bunch. I'm not sure how the pleats will hold up. It's rayon, so I wasn't sure if I should set the pleats with heat (like a synthetic), or vinegar (like natural fibre). I used heat but I might have to try vinegar later. I don't know.

I also made these PJs for the Giant Baby. I made these while I was angry with Spotlight, so the pants are made from a throw rug, I bought at the supermarket. The top is actually a plain, white, tee shirt from Target that I drew Spyro the Dragon on with tee shirt markers and gold fabric paint. I had fun making these partly because I don't often get to make stuff for him, since what he wants is just tee shirts with characters on.

So that's what I've been up to lately. I've got one more dress planned, but don't know when I'll get time to make it.

I'm updating this with a picture of Tiny in the Brady Bunch dress. It looks less Brady Bunch on. I had a navy blue belt over it (which made it look VERY edwardian) at one point but Tiny hated it and fought like a little demon to get it off. She added every hair accessory she could find instead.