Baha Cat's costume

The costume is finally finished. It usually includes a jacket, but as that is not absolutely necessary, I am not going to make it. The background is not quite suited to the style, but this was the sunny spot in my living room and good lighting was a greater concern.

Related earlier posts:
Baha Cat's vest and stuff for Brother Dreary
Hat for the Baha Cat
Shoes for the Baha Cat's costume
Helavyö
Baha Cat's shirt

Baha Cat's shirt

The shirt for Baha Cat's folk costume is not made of right kind of fabric, but it looks good enough for the purpose. The pieces are all rectangles, with seams on the shoulders and sleeves.


I was going to sew the cuffs and collar in place, but as the fabric was a bit stretchy, I thought fabric glue would be a better choice. It does look neater this way. The opening on the back is closed with two snaps and the cuffs are closed with one snap each. Actually, there should be buttons, but for this small scale, I'm content with this solution.



Related earlier posts:
Baha Cat's vest and stuff for Brother Dreary
Hat for the Baha Cat
Shoes for the Baha Cat's costume
Helavyö

Brother Dreary's sweater

Brother Dreary's sweater is finished now. It is a bit tricky to get on the doll, because of the yarns on the back of the pattern, especially in the sleeves. However, this is a traditional model that has fairly narrow sleeves, so I couldn't make them any wider.

Related earlier posts:
Brother Dreary project
Baha Cat's vest and stuff for Brother Dreary

Helavyö

The most problematic part of the folk costume is the belt, called "helavyö." It consists of a leather belt adorned with metal pieces. I've got a choker I can use for Brother Dreary's belt, but the belt for the Baha Cat needed to be made from scratch.

The dangling metal pieces in the belt are not actually hearts, but more like leaves, but as I only had a heart shaped hole puncher, this belt was going to have heart shaped pieces. The metal sheet in the picture is relief foil (meant for making embossed pictures).


Next, I glued pieces of metal wire to the back of the hearts. The square parts are made of two layers of cardboard glued together. It would have been much too difficult to actually make tiny buckles, so I decided to simplify things quite a bit.


Then I painted the squares. Gold color on the edges and the belt color in the middle.


I made holes in the bottom edge of the squares and attached the hearts using the metal wires. I thought of gluing also the other end of the wire in place, but decided not to. I will do that, if the pieces start getting caught in the fabric or yarn of the doll's clothes.


Finally, I glued the squares to a strip of red leather and made a buckle using the same foil I used for the hearts. The buckle is much simpler than what is used in real belts, but the mechanism should be correct.



Related earlier posts:
Brother Dreary project
Socks and the beginning of the vest
Parts of the vest
Baha Cat's vest and stuff for Brother Dreary
Sewing the large vest
Hat for the Baha Cat
Shoes for the Baha Cat's costume

Max is finished

I finished the larger version of Max. The main part that was missing were the hands. I made them from Cernit modeling clay. The picture below shows the hands after baking, but before painting. I had to paint them as the white was wrong shade. I had painted the head with titanium white, so the hands had to be the same shade, not the slightly translucent cream color of the modeling clay.

The next photo shows how the head will stay in place. First I thought I wouldn't glue the head in place, although the metal pipe is glued to the body, but the head is fairly heavy and if it fell, it would probably break (or at least the ears would), so I decided that glue would be safer.

I'm using PVA glue for everything else, but for the hands, I used hot glue. The hands turned out to be a bit too big and I noticed that already before baking them, but they were so good that I didn't want to spoil everything by trying to make them smaller. This large version isn't exactly like small Max in any case, so some differences in proportions won't matter.

Finally, here is the finished figure with large Schizo and the mini figures for both.

Related earlier posts:
Maxi Max
Body for Max

Shoes for the Baha Cat's costume

I made the shoes for the Baha Cat's costume. Those are described in the Fashion Doll Shoes blog.



Related earlier posts:
Brother Dreary project
Socks and the beginning of the vest
Parts of the vest
Baha Cat's vest and stuff for Brother Dreary
Sewing the large vest
Hat for the Baha Cat

Hat for the Baha cat

Before starting to make the hat for Brother Dreary, I wanted to test the technique with the Baha cat. I bought 4 mm thick black felt for the purpose.

First I made a paper pattern to get right size of hole in the middle of the brim. The ears were the main problem and the hole also needed to be the right shape to allow them through without needing a too big hole.

The felt was a bit difficult to cut, so I needed to draw the hole on the felt before cutting. Usually I just attach the pattern on top of the material to be cut.


Here are the necessary pieces:


I started assembly by gluing the vertical parts to the top.


Then I glued this to the brim.


Here is the hat seen from below. I'm thinking of gluing light-colored band to the inside where the felt touches the doll's head to avoid any staining.


This is how the hat looks on the doll:


The pattern for the hat is available on my web site.


Related earlier posts:
Brother Dreary project
Socks and the beginning of the vest
Parts of the vest
Baha Cat's vest and stuff for Brother Dreary
Sewing the large vest