Wearables Sewing Project: Unfinished Business [ Round 95 ]

I REALLY should actually participate in this one , since I have an actual mountain of unfinished projects, some dating back over 15 years.

So, I'm initially picking one of my more recent UFO's, this one from 2016, and will be working on Project Victorian Gingham.

Ten gingham dresses for my SD sized girls, all with long sleeves and the body of the dress gathered onto the yoke. Each dress differing in design details such as sleeve style, sash vs. belt, ruffles, and other details. Each dress in a different colour of gingham.

I cut the first of the dresses (teal) out, as near as I can recall, some time before June 2016 and rushed through finishing it for Maudie (Volks Kujo/SD10 Swarrrico, later on AiL body) as she was the new arrival who had no clothes of her own:

She's the youngest of the SD sized girls, so gets the more "young-child style without a belt or sash at the waist.

Which leaves the nine for the girls who get successively older styles from Maudie's six-years-old, through to Sera's very-late-teens-almost-adult that are currently in various states of completion from having been dragged out occasionally when I needed something to work on at a craft day and, possibly (though I don't remember for sure) previous rounds of these Sewing Projects.

The pieces cut out:


Work on the orange gingham dress for Sera (Elfdoll Soah) the eldest girl of the family:



So, that's my plan

EDITED TO ADD: Oh yes, and here are most of the gilrs I'll be sewing for along with their male siblings and cousins:


And here's the last of them. Fourteen-year-old cousin Phige, second eldest child in the family), who will be getting a black gingham dress as befits her self-proclaimed "tragic" lifestyle (she's the only non-orphan among them, and an indulged only-child to boot):


Teddy

 

@Teddy Yayyyy! I am so excited to see your work!

Looks like a lot of fun and sufficiently large undertaking!

Also - your Maudie is sooooooo cute. Her dress works so well with her sweet face!

 

I'm rooting for the girls getting their dresses Teddy!
Sera's at least looks set to finish. ;}

 

Oh perfect! I'll just carry over from last round, shall I? (I haven't done a thing on Hedwig's anything and I am not happy about that. Somehow the extra time one should have in lockdown gets cancelled out if you're a teacher and the government decides to close-but-not-close schools )

 

Jany, my daughter & sisters tell me their teaching jobs have never been harder. :/
Hope you can find some sewing time to enjoy. Just finding motivation while home with plenty of spare time has overwhelmed me this past 10 months!
I'm looking forward to watching what everyone works on.

 

I'll be starting out by finishing my 50s dress from the last round... I thought I was just about done, but somehow when I put the bust in and then added the straps, the perfect fit stopped fitting perfectly, the snaps would no longer close up the back, and everything was a lumpy, off-kilter travesty from the waist up
I have to take all that back out and figure out what I did wrong; somehow the way I did it pulled the whole thing out of shape.

Once I get that all sorted, I'd like to work on a dress for my Elfdoll Rita that I started literally years ago and never finished. I have most of the bodice done, but I'd lost motivation to work on it because the doll it was for was taken apart for mods and repairs for a long time. She's back together now and I'd love to complete the dress. It's a doll-scale version of a Gucci dress I saw in a fashion magazine ages ago; I'll have to see if I can find my original inspiration photo again when I'm ready to start working on it.

For now, back to fighting with these stupid boob cups

 

thedarkstar13, we'll keep cheering you on!
Darn technical difficulties. :/

 

@Jany, I'm right there with you, though for different reasons. (I don't envy teachers right now.) I just got sidetracked with other projects... one of which is trying to clean up the studio so that I actually have better space to work. At the moment I'm debating sandblasting or C4, it's that crazy.

I also slowed myself down by deciding to re-knit the sweater. The original looks great on my larger OT Terra, but I realized that the double-stranding I used on it messed up the drape I was looking for. The current version is single strand, and has a much more natural drape. The denim skirt came out mostly great -and it has pockets! - and not many people would be looking at the one area I didn't like, which is the back fastening. As for the boots...

Hmmm...

I've got some great fabric for boots, a pair of lasts, and a sample pair of slip-ons done to test a pattern size. The sole turned out to be too wide, so a new pattern has been drafted, and need to be tested again before I cut into the faux suede.

I also keep having the idea of accessories knocking around the back of my mind. I made the bag on a whim with leftovers from the denim, and an empty bag seems kind of pointless. So... what did I have in my bag during the '80s? Spiral notebook, paperback, sketchbook, gaming supplies (can I print dice to scale?), and that common equipment of the teenager/young adult of the decade - a Walkman. We'll see how much of it I can get to. The paperback at least, and hopefully the Walkman. Anything else would be a bonus.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UmwshWjKoj9woWj89


Nyx

Can anyone tell me why the IMG links always seem to be broken, and if it's just me?

 

phoenyxashe, the good news is I can see your photo when I click on the link...that's better than many of the broken links here.
It seems to be a DoA platform problem? Some times i find that if I share the smaller image links from photobucket I have better luck than when I share the full image links. But photos will show fine some days then be x icons on other days. :/

 

What you're using isn't an image link, it's a link to a page containing an image. Image links have to end with an image extension (jpg, gif, or png), otherwise they won't work.

For me, I'm just going to sit here and watch what everyone else does. I do have sewing projects, but I accidentally started a human-size cosplay for myself and I know darn well I'm not going to break focus on that to work on other projects (though as I hit sewing stages, some doll stuff might work its way in while I'm at the machine anyway).

 

Think! I'm hoping that all the dresses will work for their individual wearers, seeing as the details are different in each dress, it's easy to reflect the individual personalities. My tomboy, Hannah, for example, will have a ruffle-free dress with straight sleeves. Entitled princess, Nettle, will be all ruffles and bows, the two eldest girls will have their dresses cinched-in with Swiss waists, rather than belts or sashes... etc.

Thanks Kathel. Such a shame that your dolly-sewing time is gone for the time being so you can't join in this round, but you got some lovely outfits done while you could still devote time to doll sewing.

My (larger) rag dolls now have a wardrobe of gingham outfits (some of them still only part-made...) in all these colours, because the first lot of gingham I bought was in the wrong size or pattern - too big for my SD girls

Excellent! - those are cute fabrics too.

Sounds like a plan!

I've been working my regular hours, but from home, for nearly a year now - theoretically, that gives me an extra 3 hours a day when I'm not commuting to and from work, but somehow that just seems to evaporate into the aether, and nothing extra gets done with the time.

Well poop! But this is the perfect opportunity to fix it. Best of luck with the next run at it! and Good Hunting when looking gfor the Gucci dress picture(s).

Good luck there - I've been chipping away at clearing-up (well, excavating, really) and reorganising my sewing room since early December. It's almost useable now but I know if I start sewing in there before I finish sorting (and finding homes for) the last few piles of stuff, I'll never get back to them and they will form an alliance to become the core of the next mess that buries the sewing room and makes it unusable.

Gour denim bag items sound like a fun project

I think it's a DoA fault. I get random pictures refusing to work (they show if you hit reply or edit, and they're linked if you click on them, but don't show in the post (as exampled by the one picture that randomly won't show up in my initial post in this thread).

Don't you hate it when accidents happen, sat there one day, minding your own business and getting on with your life, and suddenly you're cutting out fabric and running it through the machine....? Happens to me a lot (and usually ends up being added to the unfinished projects mountain... I currently have, I think, 5 unfinished medieval houpellandes at various stages of construction, for example plus many other costumes-in-progress)


Teddy

 

Teddy, one day my tweens want a dress similar to your rag doll in style. I have the striped linen waiting but it's not going to be soon! The varied styles sounds perfect!
And thanks for all the chickens this morning! XD

 

I actually laughed out loud.

When this happens to me, I can always tell I'm in a good mental space

...

My goal this round is going to be to finish up my Comi Baby Cutie Yori's cosplay... she's gonna be Vanellope from Wreck-it Ralph.
Here is her current state & reference pic:




Her eyes are a little hard to see due to some weirdness in resizing pics, so I'll share a larger photo when I'm farther along, but I just got her new eyes in last week... they match the brown-green fade nicely.

Last month I did her tights, the layered cupcake wrapper skirt (with a zipper!!!! That was a HUGE success), and the sweatshirt. I made the patterns for all of them, brute-force style.

Plan is as follows:

• Remake sweatshirt. I was SUPER happy with some of my seams and hems on it, but in the end, not accounting for hems on the sleeves when I cut the pieces led to the sleeves been too short for my taste. And I don't love the "pulling" where the front pocket is when she puts her hands inside. So I'm gonna make this a bit more oversized. Shouldn't be too challenging now that I've done it once. .... Oh, and I gotta remember to include the pink sweatshirt strings that I forgot the first time around.
• Make some little black booties in a really simple style. The focus will actually be getting some "gummy" pink treads on the bottom of them.
• I've got a wig for her with a ponytail that just arrived yesterday (woohoo!), so I'll decorate that with some little candies as pictured in the reference photo.
• Anddddd, finally character-wise I'm REALLY happy with how the nose and mouth of Cutie Yori looks against the reference pic, but I do want to do a very, very little bit of darkening on her eyeliner and eyebrows to complete the look!

Onwards!!!!

 

I haven't QUITE made it to that point, but the $100 of velvet in my sewing room is just sitting there... taunting me. On the upside, I have to draft the design before I can make it so I'll probably sneak in some dolly sewing anyway--my favorite way of drafting things is to sew them up at roughly 1/4 scale and was even before I got into BJDs, after all. I have a nice half-finished cloak waiting on me right now (under the massive roll of velvet), and a trio of robes that need some problem-solving... maybe I should sign up for this round after all.

 

They'll look adorable!

Chickens???

Cute - What a shame you have to remake the hoodie, otherwise you'd be so close to done.

That's just mean of it. I feel your pain - I have 10 metres of the most gorgeous blue and red silk brocade on a roll behind my sewing room door doing the same.

{GRIN!!!}

Teddy

 

No matter! It will be worth the effort. The more I practice the small hems and seams, the quicker I'm getting at them (so funny how "taking it slow" when doing the physical sewing makes these small items come to life so much more quickly!) Honestly, the sweater fabric was pretty okay to work with, so I'm not dreading going back to it or anything

 

Teddy, there's another CHUCKLE for the day! Darn auto correct! XD
And beware those bolts of fabric lurking behind doors waiting to pounce... ;}

 

I've been distracted by other projects for the last few months, so I'm excited to get back to sewing! I'll be making a gentleman's suit, circa 1840s: shirt, trousers, waistcoat, and frock coat (I'm going for more of a daywear look versus an evening/formal look, although I do plan to create a formal suit in the future). I probably won't achieve full historical accuracy, but I'm going to try to be as faithful as possible to the fashionable silhouette of the period. For the design of each piece, I'll be referencing fashion illustrations from the period, as well as extant garments in museum collections.

The gentleman in question will be the latest addition to my crew, August (Little Rebel Andre/2D Doll hybrid), pictured below on the right:



It's (extremely) doubtful that I will finish the entire outfit this round, but I'm hoping that I can at least complete the shirt and trousers. My first attempt at the shirt, from a couple of months ago, did not go well: the handkerchief linen that I ordered was too coarse and heavy. Fingers crossed that the new shirt fabric I picked out will work better!

Looking forward to everyone's creations this round!

 

Gamine, that sounds like great fun (to watch you tackle that is!) Can't wait to see the progress.

 

Hello! I'd like to join this month's round. I have a box of "unfinished businesses", not a big one but there still were options when I went through it today. I'd like to start by finishing a blue silk body-blouse. I worked on it in August, had to redo the seam at the collar 3 times (still not happy with it), then realized that the seam on the chest should be higher and put it aside in exasperation.
My model, as always, is Ayleen - Fairyland Littlefee Chloe. Here she is wearing the blouse-in-progress:
Blue blouse - unfinished by helgie, on Flickr
To do:
- redo the middle seam and back, make the upper part shorter.
- maybe adjust shoulder seams.
- choose sleeve design. The 3 options I am considering are pictured on the drawing behind Ayleen. What do you think? I'm leaning towards 1 - "no sleeves" - but am yet undecided.
- make the bottom part.
- figure out closure (it is currently held together with pins and is a mess).
All the available material is in the picture, it is in long and rather narrow strips. Hope to use it all up.
If making the blouse goes fine, I may get to sewing Ayleen some trousers to wear it with, perhaps even a jacket.

 

Helgie, you might have enough fabric to do a small upper puff on a long narrow sleeve...or perhaps add a strip of lace up the sleeve to piece together the strips of fabric to have enough to cut out sleeves?
At least the MSD size doesn't require as much fabric as some.
I hope the project is more cooperative as you return to it. It is a pretty color on her.

 

Well, that makes far more sense.

Nice.

Sweet. I think the sleeves with the ful puff at the top and the long narrow cuff at the bottom look best, especially with that collar style.

Teddy

 

I decided to check up on this group in hopes that it was unfinished business month, so yay, I will love having the inspirations from here to help me with my big pile of unfinished pieces. I love imagining projects and getting started on them, but somehow they tend to so often slip away before the finished stage.

 

@dailymare Yay! Can't wait to see what you decide to work on!!


My dolly's wig came in yesterday, and it was a ... fun ... moment when I remembered that I went ahead and bought a larger wig than I needed for her because this was the ONLY black with with a ponytail and bangs that I could find anyyyyyywhere.
I should consider learning how to style wigs, but I was just not really into that idea at the time... so here we are.

So, I will also add to the list of to-dos for mine that I am learning how to make a very specific and detailed wig.. smaller.
I am 100% sure I can figure this out, but I am going to appreciate the moral support of this group to make it through LMAO.
Good thing I know how to sew, amirite?









I seriously love how long the ponytail is in comparison to her height, so this effort is going to be worth it.

 

@helgie I like sleeve #2! That is a gorgeous shade of blue, too.

@maxxxamillion your project is looking awesome so far; interested to see what you come up with for resizing the wig. I've only tried resizing a pre-made wig once, and it was just long, wavy hair--- no ponytails. I folded a dart into the elastic wig cap (like how you did with the clip in the pic, but from the inside), sewed it, and then clipped out the excess so there wasn't a big lump inside the cap. It worked fine for that plain wig, but I don't know how well it would translate to a wig with a ponytail.

As for me, it seems like the rule with this dress is that I have to completely mess up each step once before I get it right. Terrible enormous boob cups are now sewn in for the second time and everything fits great, so naturally when I added the straps I cut everything too short to reach to the back. Have now undone all that and am remaking the straps. Would really, really like to be done with this and move on to my next project!

 

@thedarkeststar13 I'm just imagining your sewing experience in, like, black and white TV, as a slapstick comedy, where each thing that can go wrong does go wrong. Hope it's bringing you some laughs amongst your sighs! I *knoooow* the feeling of those projects where every step is like that! I'm rooting for you!!

 

Honestly that's pretty much a perfect visualization of this project--- it's going about as smoothly as one of Lucy's schemes in an I Love Lucy episode
I guess it's only fitting that it's a 50s dress, then!
Well, new straps are cut and ironed, so here goes putting them on.....again.

 

ra ra ra ra! go go go, you cannnnn do it!

 

Good luck!

You sound like one of my costuming students who says she makes every costume at least twice before it's finished. I'm sure that, like her, you'll end up with a very nice result.

Teddy

 

@PoeticSoul Thanks for the input! I think you and @thedarkeststar13 are totally right about the darts. I think the trick will be trying to keep the outer hair looking "clean", so I may very well opt to hand sew this to enable to me watch my stitching very carefully.

I'll be shortening it from front to back as well, and I think I've got a trick up my sleeve to make that happen. I'll try to take good photos of this whole wig process, because if I succeed I think it could be really informative.

Also, I very much appreciate you sharing the converse suggestion on the dart topic (expand a dart with an elastic). My Rowan (now she's finally got a name - Allie!) from the last challenge has a wig that I cut a slit in up the back, and while it sits fine on her head, I think your elastic suggestion will tidy that one up really nicely.

I can imagine that feathering the black wig will take some time, but definitely checks out from my experiences at the hairdresser ... though this'll be the first time I try it with a wig, I have used that method to trim eyelashes for my dolls! Great suggestion.

 

My suggestion would be to take horizontal tucks in the wig-cap between each row of hair-wefts, so there's no hair bulk in the tucks, just the cap itself.

Teddy

 

@Teddy Mmm, I see.... tricky! But I see. Thanks for the suggestion as well! I will report back on my findings with all this helpful input soon

 

@maxxxamillion and @Teddy thanks for the votes of confidence! I'M FINALLY DONE

Here's Matilda in the finished dress-- it's weird, because from a direct front view like this it doesn't look like the bust part is that big or would be that hard to sew around...


Here's a closer view of the part that took about 75% of the work on the whole dress...

It's not perfect, but it's good enough for me at this point! This dress was a lot easier the first time I made it, for a body with a much smaller bust. This time it was a serious challenge. I'm happy I redid it though-- I really wanted Matilda to be able to still wear this outfit. (Especially after all the work I put into that necklace when I made it specifically to go with the original dress...the smaller beads are 2mm quartz and so small that I couldn't see the holes in them at all. When I was stringing them it was just kind of sliding each tiny bead around on the point of the needle until it went through.) The dress actually does look better on the bigger, curvier body anyway-- it suits the rockabilly pin-up look more.

And now to catch my breath for a second before I start on the project I really wanted to do this round!

 

thedarkstar13, it looks fantastic! Congratulations on succeeding after all the effort!!!

 

thank you! I really had to work for that one-- I might have tossed it to the side instead of finishing had I not been sharing my progress in this thread

 

@thedarkeststar13 OMG. This was SO worth finishing! This is amazing!!!
Her whole look is really a treat. I'm so happy you stuck with it

 

thank you!! (for the congratulations AND the encouragement!) I'm glad I didn't quit... and glad I'm finally done with that one

 

I really need to take part in this, I have drawers full of unfinished stuff. I'll start with what I intended last month, and which didn't happen. I think I started this project about two years ago, or it may be more. I can't quite remember. The plan was to make 1960s inspired outfits for my two tiny girls, Holly and Ziyan. I've lots of other things to finish, so will see how it goes.



The blue and white is for Holly, and the peach and white is for Ziyan.

 

Yay! It looks like it was well worth the perseverance.

Fingers crossed for getting it done this time around. I love the sailor styles - so classic a look.

Teddy

 

I'm actually getting stuff done!!!


Progress!! Helped immensely by the fact that I'm attending the British Filk Convention on Zoom, so I'm spending lot of time sewing while sat listening to all the lovely songs.

Teddy

 

I hope so! I'm pretty much starting over, as the first attempt didn't go too well. If the tiny box pleats don't work at this small scale, the girls will get regular pleated skirts.

Yay! for getting stuff done!

Thanks so much @PoeticSoul! I love this style for little girls.

 

@thedarkeststar13 So nice to see Matildas dress from the last round. You really made a lot of work on it, and it looks
gorgeous.
I got so inspired by this round that I finally finished a skirt yesterday. It looked good from the front, but now it also looks ok from the back without being covered, as it is possible to close . I used velcro this time.

 

Well done @Jenny. Smooth line looks great.

 

@thedarkeststar13 That is one special dress! Looks amazing.

 

Works well

I'm making progress on Project Victorian Gingham while listening to the British FilkCon performances on Zoom.

So far I've hand-sewn some yoke linings in place (several dresses), hand neatened armhole seams (several dresses), pinned the second sleeve into the purple dress:


and partially pinned the second hem ruffle onto the beige dress:



Currently all the skirts are attached to the yokes, all but three of the sleeves are sewn in (and one of those is pinned in place, ready to sew). Some of them have the yoke linings fully sewn in, some of them have the side seams and the sleeve seams sewn, some have side seams and part of the sleeve seams sewn, some of them have the neck binding in place.

The orange dress looks nearly finished, just needing the fastenings, and the Swiss-waist to cinch it in at the waist (haven't yet patterned that, let alone cut it out), but unfortunately, the cuffs need unpicking and replacing with larger ones as I somehow made them too tight...


And, yes - they do all need ironing as they've mostly been stuck in a bag with the rest of the fabric for four years, which tends to leave things wrinkled.

{sigh!} No idea why the pictures aren't showing up but if you hit reply they'll show up in that, or click on them, it will take you to the picture in Flickr.

Teddy

 

Looking good @Teddy!

 

Teddy I'm glad you're attending FILKcon & getting the sewing tackled! So much gingham...so many pins!!! Can't wait to see how far you get on this herculean task. ;}

 

@Teddy Beautiful work! You have inspired me to sew a dress for my doll.
I use the BBC code to post from Flickr

 

Thanks everyone !

So do I but sometimes it simply refuses to work.

Teddy

 

@Teddy Wooooooow so many pins! You are so patient! I'm so stubborn about even pinning a couple things... Do you find that this helps your pleats to come out especially flat?

 

It's how I get gathers even

If I try with a gathering thread, the sewing-machine foot just pushes them long ahead of it as it sews, so they all bunch-up. If I pin every gather, they come out much more evenly spaced. Takes forever, but gets better results.

But I do my pleats in a similar way (fewer pins and folding the fabric between them to make each pleat), and they come out nice and even. If you look back at my first post in this thread, the orange gingham has a pleated ruffle instead of gathers, and the hem ruffle on this dress was done the same way:



Teddy

 

@Teddy Wow. The back of that dress is really something else. Thanks for sharing! You're giving me so much justification to convince myself into more patience around my projects

 

Well Teddy you convinced me to join in the fun. Here is the start of my Victorian style dress for Dollshe Amanda. For the top, I up sized a pattern from Molendrix dot com Victorian day dress for Tyler Wentworth doll. The name of the pattern is Estelle. The skirt is the "Victorian ball gown" pattern from www.antiquelilac.com I removed the train in back and added more fullness to the side gore. I have to do all the stitching and finishing but here is the general idea.
victorian dress WIP by Linda, on Flickr