Arts in the Afternoon

I'm currently much more comfortable with clothes patterns than before, so I had no trouble resizing a simple Barbie pattern to fit a Living Dead Doll. The outfit is "Arts in the Afternoon" from Mari DeWitt's book "Vintage Clothing for the Fashion Doll."

First, here is the outfit as shown in the book. I have made this for Barbie, and as it is a fairly simple design, I wanted to try it in a different size.

Here is the original pattern in the book and the reduced pattern for the Living Dead Doll.

Here are the pieces about halfway through the process. I'm not going through the process here, because of copyright issues, but you can see for yourself how this is done.

And here is the other side of the same piece. The lining is attached to the outer part, which makes sewing a lot easier. Of course you could just as well make this without a lining, which is what I usually do just to keep the seams thinner.

After this, you just sew the side seams and attach a closing mechanism, in this case pieces of velcro, and the top is finished. I made the skirt out of a rectangular piece of fabric, which I put around the doll to see where and how many darts were needed. The skirt is also lined using the same fabric as in the picture above.

Knitting

It's been a long time since the last post. Here is a compilation of some knitted doll clothes I have made recently. First, something for the smaller Miss Piggy.

Next, Monster High dresses from similar yarn as Miss Piggy's dress.

Then I tried some dresses with short sleeves.

A dress for Jessica Rabbit, made with just one ball of yarn that had alternating colors.

Here is a group picture of dolls wearing knitted dresses made of the same brand of yarn (Novita puro) in different colors.

Finally, an experiment in making a knitted jump suit. It's better than my first try, but the pattern still requires some modifications.

New dresses

My purchases from the crafts fair last weekend included some really nice fabrics.

Of course I had to try them right away. The first thing I made was a dress for Nikki. You can find the pattern here.

The most challenging part for making clothes for Nikki is her tail. Here is a back view to show how I solved the problem in this dress.

Next, I made a dress for Daisy Slae (Living Dead Doll). This is a fully lined A-line dress with an open back closed with snaps. The pattern can be found here.

As I was cutting the fabric for the dress the first time, I made a mistake. Fortunately, I did not need to discard that piece as, after a little modification, it was fine for a Baha Cat's dress. So, the two now have almost identical dresses (the Baha Cat's dress is not lined and it has side seams).

Shirt, trousers and jacket for a Living Dead Doll

I didn't make a pattern of the first suit I made for Schizo, but this time I made sure I had paper copies of the pieces I used for the clothes. I was first going to make just the jacket and trousers, but then thought it would be useful to have a shirt as well. It is sleeveless, so it is easier to fit under the jacket.

Both shirt and trousers have an opening on the back, because snaps or buttons on the front make bulges that don't look nice. I noticed that with Schizo's trousers. The fabric used for the shirt is slightly stretchy, but as this doll's arms move a bit better than Schizo's, another kind of fabric would have worked as well.

The pattern is available on my web site as a PDF file.

Fitting shirt for a less articulated doll

The problem with dolls that have straight arms that go slightly outwards from the body is getting certain items of clothing on the doll. For example, if the hands are far from each other, you need a very wide shirt or one made of very stretchy material. I solved the problem by making the shirt in two parts.

In the picture, you can see that, instead of having front and back pieces, this one has left and right. There will be opening in both front and back.


This is the finished shirt. I used velcro for fastening and attached some trimming in front, because I didn't feel like sewing in fake buttons.



Here is the shirt on a Living Dead Doll.