New Dress For Journey Girl Dana

Not long ago, I made a dress for my 18 inch Journey Girl Dana. This is my first time sewing anything for an 18 inch doll.

I like that there's more fabric to work with compared to say a 12 inch doll. There is less fiddling. I dislike fiddling.

Journey Girl doll tends to sit in a certain position so I made a dress which can spread out. It's a fairly simple dress - a sleeveless bodice joined to a skirt. I think it took me an hour to sew it. I didn't use any curse words. When I sew for 12 inch dolls, I swear a lot.

I used a leftover fabric and was very happy I managed to use it up! One thing I don't like about making bags and pouches is there is a lot of leftover fabric and it is usually in odd shapes and amount. I have a ton of such fabric remnants.

Unlike my bags and pouches, I'm not so anal about hiding raw edges in doll's clothing. I suppose I could have used my serger except I forgot I own one when I was sewing the dress. I used snaps for closure. I think snaps are the cleverest invention.

What do you think of this dress? Does it suit Dana?

New shift dress for Lammily Doll

With so many things competing for my attention daily, including lurking at supermarkets, cooking and taking long naps, it's no wonder I often neglect my dolls. The most enjoyable part of playing with dolls is dressing them up. Lammily doll is built based on a more realistic body type compared to Barbie and that itself causes some problems as there aren't many doll outfits which fit Lammily.

With only one stock outfit to her name (see here), I decided to make a dress for my dear doll. I mean I am after all a sewer and taking a piece of fabric and draping it round Lammily simply doesn't qualify as an outfit. I have sewn doll outfits for Barbie dolls and Mell-chan doll before so I can tell you it's a lot of work. Plus I'm quite impatient so handling small pieces of fabric is not the best thing for me.

By hook or by crook, I did it. What do you think? I didn't make it too fitting because I found it a bit hard to sew around the armholes if they were any smaller.

To make my life more complicated, I lined the dress. The lining is totally not necessary because it's a doll dress. How many times are you going to wash it anyway?

I wanted to take a few photos of Lammily in her new dress but it was quite a struggle. I'm using a new camera and I've only read a few pages of the User's Manual. There are 390 pages in all. Some of the things I used to do to in my previous camera, I realised don't always work in my new camera. The biggest problem I face is the focusing. Anyway, I hope to figure it out soon.

Because Lammily doesn't have articulated knees, she can only sit with her legs stretched out in front of her, I had to make sure the dress can accommodate the stretch.

The dress hem sits slightly under her knees. I don't mind making the hemline shorter. My son commented that the shift dress looks like a maternity dress! He's right.

This is only a sample dress so I didn't want to waste my plastic snaps. I sewed two sets for the top. I've forgotten where I bought these plastic snaps. They're perfect for doll outfits!

I don't think Lammily is a sexy doll. Well, it is sort of anti-Barbie... but in this shot, I thought she looks crazy sexy. (not in a weird doll-sex way, you know what I mean!)

With the haze still on going and yes, the western part of Singapore where I live is still the hardest hit, Lam Lam has been going a bit stir crazy. Earlier today, the haze looked a tiny bit better and I saw her pointing at the window.

"Lam go out." 

(why do I assume dolls speak poor English?)

I let Lam sit downstairs for a while. She was pretty happy.

Then she found a blue bench to sit on.

It matches her dress!

Lammily wouldn't budge from her blue chair for a very long time.

I took my eyes off her for one second and she disappeared. Where is she?

OMG. Those are big people bikes Lammily!

Finally Lammily got off the dangerous bikes. Thank goodness she finally stopped screwing around.

Wait a minute...

"Look Jane. No hands."

It's safe to say there won't be any more trips downstairs for Lammily for a while. It got my step counter up though.

New shorts for Melly, Mell-chan doll

Folks,

I complain a lot about Singapore weather. Lately it's been worse. Rain, haze, humidity. My home is mostly not air-conditioned. That means I feel hot all day. Well, we do have air-conditioning in the bedrooms but I spend most of the day in the study room which is also part of the living room. When I was growing up, my home did not have any air-conditioning. My brothers kept cool by going shirtless. They wore a pair of home shorts. I kinda wish I could do that as well. But I'm a woman. And I live with other people. And there are neighbours and laws.

I wanted to make Melly, my Mell-chan doll something to wear and since it's so hot, I thought why not let her lounge around in a pair of home shorts. She is young enough to go shirtless.

After much cursing and swearing, I managed to sew Melly a decent looking pair of shorts using my scraps. I haven't made doll clothing for so long I forgot how difficult it is to sew something so small. I don't know if you are aware, making clothes for dolls was my first love. I did that when my kids were little. I pretended that it was for them. But it was really for me. On the positive side, sewing doll clothing doesn't require much fabric.

Doll clothing is no different from human clothing. They need to fit.

Thank goodness the back of the shorts doesn't go too low to reveal the butt crack. (Melly went commando on account of the heat)

 Melly loves her new shorts. It's comfy too. Wait.

What's that hanging by the side of your shorts, Melly?

What thing?

You mean this? It's my cat.

Melly! Since when did you get a cat?

Oh, never mind. Why am I talking to a doll?

How insane is that? I made pockets for Melly's home shorts. It's one inch wide. I forced Melly to empty her pockets. Thank goodness I found only some hair ribbon.

Just to give you an idea of the scale I am working with, I have posed Melly next to a 600ml bottle of water.

Melly wants to stop posing for photos and play with her friends.

Oh look, Cat gets a friend to play with too.

I didn't try very hard to hide the raw seams. Serging these little pieces of fabric would drive me nuts so I passed. For the elastic, I used an elastic used for tying hair. It is much less bulky than the ones used for human clothing. I'm very happy with this pair of shorts. Next time I will give more allowance at the top so I could hide the raw edges.

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