Sewing for YoSDs!

Ever since Borry arrived I’ve been excited to sew some YoSD sized clothing. I managed to get started a little bit today and I have my leggings pattern now fairly well worked out. For the waistband in the picture I used the lace frill edge elastics to add a little pizazz I guess…..and they wound up adding more than pizazz in the sewing department. Trying to stretch and sew a tiny waistband is no simple task, so there were some curse words uttered and a dodgy stitch here or there. XP The end result is fine for my Borry, but I fancied making some coordinates to sell, and they would not be acceptable for selling, mostly from the standpoint of how difficult it is to apply the tiny elastic. However my mother informs me that our machine might be able to do a stretch stitch, and if this is the case and the machine will do all the work, then heck why not because it looks nice. Either way I am planning to experiment with two different types of waistbands and then deciding from there which would be best to use.

I am really excited though with how these preliminary leggings came out, and on top of that I have all of these great matching fabrics I bought over the Memorial Day sales. Needless to say I am super excited to make some matching coordinates of jumpers and skirts to go with these leggings. Lots of plums and grays in this batch, but I can foresee some cute stuff!! Below are just a few of the fabrics I found this weekend. So exciting! Though I still have a ton of illustration work to do and relatives will be visiting soon, so le sigh, I’m not sure how often I will be able to sew this week. On top of this I also have some ideas for miniatures now too…I guess when it rains it pours!

Latest Project – Unoa Jeans

unoajeansworkSo, I’ve been working on a pair of Unoa sized jeans, and they have proven to be very frustrating. I am using the Unoa jeans pattern in Dolly Dolly 6 (The coordinate recipe thing). Anyway the instructions have you doing the waistband in a rather strange and fanciful way which I am still trying to wrap my head around. I gave up on trying to do the fly their way and just came up with my own way, which in the end made the waistband pattern piece too short, so I had to cut a new, longer one. My other issues with the jeans right now is that they are a little bit too big. I know that the Unoa dolls measurements are just a tiny bit bigger than the AE minis, so apparently that single centimeter in the hips matters just enough. :p

I really, really hate sewing jeans to be honest. I would much rather just buy them, but alas I lack the funds. Maybe I would like sewing jeans better if I had more practice with them so I could just belt them out like I do shirts. It would also probably help if I liked the material I was working with a little more. I picked the pale jean material up because it was on the remnants rack and the remnants were 50% off that day. Oh well, I should probably get back to work on these so I can actually finish them sometime this century. :p

Sewing Tutorial – Front Jeans Pockets

I always found the front pockets of jean patterns to be the most difficult. My first attempts at making jeans for dolls generally had non-functioning jeans pockets. :p However this is all going to change because I just found a really great little Jeans style front pocket tutorial! Now although the tut is for human sized pants, everything shown can be easily used to make doll jeans. So without further ado here is the link to the tutorial, and I shall be off to create a new pair of jeans for my girl!

http://sewinspired.blogspot.com/2007/07/jeans-style-front-pockets-tutorial.html

Japanese Fabrics

90303_2Last night I was looking at the super cute that are Japanese import fabrics. I wish I had more money so I could buy some because I would loooove to make some super cute doll clothes or plush out of them! I wish we had more of these cute style fabrics here in the US, but no, apparently we are too boring or something. Look, even their straight pins are cuter than ours in Japan!

Here are a few links to online shops selling Japanese import fabrics:
Reprodepot: http://reprodepot.com/index.html
Prices are listed per half yard and are a little bit pricey.

FabricTales: http://www.fabrictales.com/
Prices are per yard and a little less expensive than Reprodepot.

SuperBuzzy: http://www.superbuzzy.com/
Prices are mostly per yard and they are about as expensive as Reprodepot.

Skinny MSD Dress – Final Version-ish

stardress01-4x5Alright, so here’s the final version of the unfinished dress I posted previously. There are things I like about it, and also things I don’t like, but I think this will be the final version that I will try to sell. Anyway I’m going to make a one-off of this using a fabric with a little flower pattern and maybe give it a ribbon waistband and whatnot. Anything I make for selling, I will be sure to post here as well.