Playing with dolls

My Wellie Wishers doll arrived last week and she is very, very cute. I like her even more in person. The only disappointment is her pigtails. One is a perfect sausage curl. The other is a curly mess. They're also uneven. At this point I'm on the fence about whether to try to fix the wonky one, or just take them out. In the end, I'll probably decide the ringlets are too much effort and take them down. Right now I haven't fixed them or taken them down.

 Since I'm home sick today, I decided to play around with a few of my similar sized dolls and see who fits what. First everyone tried on Willa's outfit. (I'm thinking of changing her name to Willow. Willa sounds weird to me, like it's supposed to be something else but I'm mispronouncing it or something. I know I'm not but it just sounds wrong to me.)

 Anna looks almost painfully cute in this. (Her hair's a tiny bit messy because the Giant Baby is a little confused about who she belongs to.) The clothes fit well, but I couldn't get her feet into Willa's boots.

  Molly looks cute too. The clothes are a little loose on her but not badly so. The fit is a little weird but I think that's mostly because of the weird shape of Molly's shoulder area. The boots fit her too, but they were so loose around her legs that they looked ridiculous.

  I really like they way Tabitha looks in this! But in all fairness, I like the way Tabitha looks in most things. The clothes fit her well, but her feet were too long for Willa's boots.

I actually really like Willa's outfit! And it looks like it's going to be one of those outfits that more or less fits and looks good on most dolls.

 Next, just for fun, I tried Anna's dress on everyone. (But not her cloak because it's a glitter-shedding monstrosity.)

 It's a little tight across Willa's bust but fits her as well as it fits Anna. (It's quite tight on Anna's waist.) Even Anna's boots fit. Willa makes a pretty cute Anna.

 I was surprised by how tight this dress was on Molly! I kept thinking of her as the thinnest doll here (especially after everyone tried Willa's outfit on) but this dress was probably tighter on her than anyone else. The side seams on the bodice were straining. I'm putting this down to Molly's different body shape, or witchcraft, or something.

 This fit Tabitha weirdly. The Chrysalis dolls are quite sway backed and the waistline of Anna's dress hit pretty much exactly where Tabitha's tummy sticks out the most. Consequently it took a couple of tries to find a pose that didn't make her look pregnant.

Next everybody tried on Molly's dress.

Willa looks quite cute but also a little boring in this. Also, I could only get the bottom press stud to do up, it was too tight across the chest and shoulders and quite loose at the waist.

On the other hand it was far too big for Anna. But a bit tight around the arms.

I really, really like this dress on Rowan. It doesn't fit perfectly, but I don't really care. At the moment this is her dress. It looks very Madman era on her, to me. It reminds me of illustrations in early 1960's kids' books.

 Next I tried Rowan's original outfit on Molly and Willa. That was cheating a little bit. Because I know it's the most forgiving outfit of all the ones that came on my 14 inch Chrysalis dolls. The dress is stretchy and the jacket has loose sleeves, so it fits almost everyone.

 It fits Willa quite well, except the sleeves are too long. But I don't think it suits her. It's too grown up, or too realistic or something. The style of the outfit, doesn't suit the style of the doll.

  Molly looks super cute though. Even though she's wearing Rowan's boots, they're way too big for her. To me, in this, she looks like a child wearing one of those obscenely expensive designer fashion brands.

  I also tried Willa in Molly's flower girl dress and it's pretty cute on her. It would probably look better if I had shoes that fit her though.

 And I tried the shirred, poppy sundress on Willa. Which probably shouldn't need to be called "trying on". The design of that sundress means it's really forgiving about who it fits.

 I kind of wish I'd had some red ribbons or poppies or something to put in her hair.

Lastly, on a whim, I tried another one of my Helen Kish Chrysalis dresses on Molly, because I thought it would suit her. It did.

  I'm going to have to skip my Word of the Month project for September. We're all sick here. But on top of that one of the girls that I work with is going on holidays and another one just quit, so I'm pretty much going to be living at work for the next few weeks, which sounds like so much fun, that I'm already growing a stomach ulcer in protest. But I will be back at that next month, and I am still working on getting those other patterns on here in the meantime.

Word of the month wrap up. Sundress pictures.

 I now have an armload of dolly sundresses! I had to make one. I ended up making three shirred sundresses, four standard sundresses and four party dresses from the standard sundress pattern! Grand total of ELEVEN dresses! (One was for my 18 inch doll and the pictures of her did NOT turn out so will need to be reshot.)

The dress that started it all. . .

  I'm quite happy with how this one turned out. I couldn't draw up the shirring as tightly as I would have liked to because 1. The printable fabric I used can run when wet so I wasn't brave enough to try steam blasting it with the iron; and 2. The elastic I used is extremely cheap and nasty and melts when ironed. After I'd made all the dresses I discovered that you can draw the shirring up more by just pulling on the ends of the elastic but it was too late by then.

I used pretty much the same design to make this dress for Molly, my Maru Mini Pal. . .

 I didn't realise until after I'd made it that Molly is kind of weirdly shaped in the shoulder area. Her shoulders are more the shape of a bisque doll's shoulder-plate than human shoulders. And so a design this strappy makes her shoulders look very slopey and in general makes her look lopsided and awkward.

  But the same dress also fits my Disney toddlers. . .

Although if I was making this for this doll, I would probably make it a little shorter.
AND it also fits my 14 inch Kish Chrysalis dolls. . .

This is Tabitha, a re-wigged Piper, and I LOVE this dress on her. This combination of doll and dress is definitely my favourite from this project!

  Then there are the procrastination dresses that I designed and sewed while I was putting off learning to do shirring. I made patterns, then had fun designing dresses. I worked with four doll sizes. My 14 inch Kish Chrysalis dolls, my 12 inch Kish Chrysalis dolls, my Maru Mini Pal, and my Wilde Imagination Patience dolls. Each size got a sundress and a party dress. Although in all honesty there were only two sizes because the bigger Helen Kish dolls are the same size as Maru, and the smaller Helen Kish dolls are the same size as Patience, other than a few tweaks of skirt and shoulder strap lengths.

  I really like this dress I made for the 12 inch Chrysalis girls. . .

 Originally I was going to adapt the same design for the 14 inch girls (I wish I had) but instead they got this. . .

Which I don't hate but it's really just not my style either.

 Molly got a cute little flower themed dress. . .

Which looks a lot better on her than the shirred one, I think it's the wider shoulder straps.
And it also looks alright on Ariel. . .

  And I discovered that Patience is a LOT of fun to design for. Because she has a fairly cartoonish face, I feel I can be a bit silly when designing for her and it's o'kay because she can get away with it! Nevertheless her sundress is fairly sweet and restrained. . .

I totally designed that as an excuse to use that fabric!

 While I was still planning those, I saw a flower girl dress in a shop window and thought to myself it looked like it could be made from the same pattern. So I made this for Molly. . .

 Then, of course, I had to make party dresses for the other dolls!

 My bigger Kish dolls got this. . .

This one didn't turn out how I expected and I'm not completely happy with it. But I do have an idea that it made be salvageable with a belt, but I forgot about that when I was taking the pictures and right now (while I don't love it) I'm accepting it as it is. It reminds me of the sort of dresses that people put on their daughters before sending them to a portrait session involving an ornate, vintage tea table that is, for no obvious reason, in the middle of an orchard or wheat field. (And of course all the photos must be printed in sepia tone or some other artistically faded effect.)

  My smaller Kish dolls got this dress which is definitely more fun. . .

 It had been meant to be rainbow coloured. Each tier a completely different colour. But I couldn't find the meshy gauzey stuff in four colours that worked together. It would have had to be three pastel and a fluorescent, or three brights and a pastel, and similar combinations which wouldn't have worked. So I compromised with all pink.

 I had most fun designing Patience's dress. It is definitely inspired by some of the dresses worn by various dolls based on the Tiana character from Princess and the Frog. And whilst Alice's colouring could not be more different to Tiana's, it still looks pretty cute on her. . .

Although I really probably should have styled her hair before I took these pictures.

And of course while I was taking the pictures for this post, I had to take some extra, just pretty pictures. . .

I HAD to share those two pictures of Molly, mostly because I spent an obscene amount of time editing all her flyaway hairs out of the pictures! I have discovered that I do not like her hair. It looks pretty and silky. It feels pretty and silky. But there's a curve to it, that won't go away, that's completely out of scale; and it gets flyaways like you wouldn't believe.

Even if  I don't like the dress, I do like this picture of Amarie. It reminds me of the old promotional photos for Heloise's dolls.

I don't know how I quite got this lighting in the next picture. . .

But I like it.

And of course I had to get a picture of the two littlies in their sundresses together. . .

Although Arden doesn't look like she's enjoying herself anywhere near as much as Lydia!

And then, because I loved her in that dress, I got some more pictures of Tabitha in the poppy sundress. . .

I also set up a "beach" and took some themed pictures. Unfortunately most of those are the photos that did not turn out right and no matter what I did, I couldn't fix the colour and contrast in them but here are the few that I do have. . .

Gwendolen takes a look at Adriel's sketch

Eloise waits for the other girls to come and play horseshoes with her

But they're too busy collecting shells, and complaining about all the broken ones

Arden and Lydia have decided to try to dig through to China!

But it didn't take long for them to get tired out and give up!

I still plan on making PDFs of the patterns to put on the blog but, I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's probably going to be another week depending on how much real life insists on intruding. Also I will be adding "How to make a doll's shirred sundress in any size", so more to come soon!

Barbies, Maru and other distractions

I've missed two Tiny Tuesday posts now because I'm a terrible human being . . . or because I'm incredibly, easily distracted.

 The week before last, I actually had something all planned but then on my way home from taking the Giant Baby to daycare, I decided to stop by the local op-shops and see what dolls they had. Unfortunately the answer to that was very few. One shop had a bunch of Bratz with no feet, another had a handful of Barbies that were frankly beyond rescue and the others had nothing. On the other hand I found a copy of the works of Shakespeare for the Giant Husband and a big ride-on Thomas the Tank Engine for the Giant Baby for two dollars!
Once I got it home I immediately took off again to buy nail polish to patch up Thomas's paintwork. Nail polish is probably not ideal for plastics but since Thomas is hard plastic it won't wreck him outright and as we can't keep it inside, we needed something hard wearing. Any wheeled toys that come inside, the baby immediately hauls on top of our television cabinet to drive them back and forth. The last thing I need is a Giant Thomas the Tank Engine chugging through my TV! Most of last week was devoted to cleaning Thomas up and repainting him. It was worth it though. He looks great and the kid loves him!

This week I was busy running up some simple dancing skirts for daycare's dress up box. Nothing fancy, just a rectangle of tulle, folded double with a casing for an elastic waistband along the fold. I think I did twelve altogether.
Both days I fully intended to post something when I was done but ran out of time.

What else has been distracting me?
One of my obsessions is genealogy and lately I've been putting some effort into my family tree. Two weeks ago, I discovered that the state of Victoria have their historical birth, marriage and death indexes online for free now. I haven't looked at their site for years, so don't know how long it's been like that. Last time I looked you had to pay a dollar for every page of results you viewed and they had less information in them than they do now. You still have to pay for certificates but the indexes still offer quite a lot of info. But I know that kind of thing bores most people to tears so I won't yammer on about it.

 A few weeks ago I realised I finally had enough money in my "Doll Savings" to buy something! This is the first time this has happened since the baby was born, I kept dipping into it to buy clothes and toys for him. Now he's got more clothes and toys than he'll ever need. Anyway, I knew I was either going to get Willa from the Wellie Wishers or a Maru mini pal from Maru and friends. If you'd asked me ahead of time, I would have said I would choose Willa. Except I didn't. When I was actually given the choice my sensible brain made one of it's rare appearances to point out that since Willa looks like a toy, I would probably get tired of her pretty quickly and so I ordered Maru instead. I picked her up from the post office this morning. Interestingly she has taken longer to get to my house from Melbourne airport, than she took to get to Melbourne from Miami! I chose Maru over the other characters because of her shoes. I wasn't sure if I would have any shoes to fit her and if I wanted to redress her, Maru's black Mary-Janes were going to be more versatile than the other characters shoes. I've only had a quick look with one pair in each size so far but MSD shoes are going to be way too big. The pair of YOSD shoes I tried fit her but they were quite snug so hopefully largish YOSD shoes should be ok.  I find it weird that she came wearing a white t-shirt under her dress and with tissue paper around her arms and neck. I realise this is so her dress doesn't stain her but surely if she has to be wrapped in tissue to wear the dress, that's a sign that that may not be the best dress for her to be wearing? Oh, well. I love her anyway, so much that I'm already making nefarious plans to find a way to get the other dolls. I really like Jamie. Her colouring reminds me of the Giant Baby, but she's not available as a mini doll yet.

I also finally found a signature Maddie Hatter doll. Years ago I had a collection of Monster High and Ever After High dolls. During a clean out, I had a fit of generosity and gave them all to one of our nieces. Later I got a seventeen inch Frankie Stein and Maddie Hatter. Then I got a standard Frankie to go with the big one. But I couldn't find a Maddie anywhere! This one is a reissue with no earrings or ring and I'm pretty sure the first release had a different handbag, but it's good enough for me. I wish I could get the 28 inch Maddie as well but no toy shops here seem to have even heard of it and international postage on something that size would be too much to be worth it.

I got Barbies for mother's day. A curvy one, a tall one and a petite one. Then today our supermarket was selling off their old toy stock and the Fashionistas were six dollars, so I got two more. Now I need to find time for body swapping! I haven't bought a Barbie in about ten years and I swear the packages were easier to open then! These ones couldn't have been harder if they were welded into sheet metal tubes! I was happy to see there seems to be less product in their hair now but a few of them have hair that feels weirdly greasy and sticky at the same time, that left weird wet patches on their boxes. I'm guessing that I'm finally encountering glue-head syndrome. I'd be more upset if I wasn't already planning to rip their heads off.

Being an old cynic, I had assumed that the curvy Barbie was just going to be the Happy Family Grandma body with a Barbie head. One of the first things I did was compare them and I'm pleased to see that it's not.

I'm also working on a (probably hopeless) plan to bully myself into doing more stuff, rather than just planning to do stuff. Hopefully it works once I've finished planning it out but not really ready to decide how likely it is to work yet. For now, it's time for me to stop procrastinating and pull the heads off some Barbies.