Hi everyone and a Happy Belated Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! It was 11:00 Saturday evening as I was laying in bed, when it dawned on me, I should have made at least a simple post to wish all the Mother’s a very Happy Mother’s Day. Sorry! I hope your weekend was nice, even it you aren’t a mother! I wore my “fixed and patched” April Cornell dress and got quite a few compliments on it! Win Win for me! I did forget to get a picture of me in it, but I will the next time I wear it.
Sylvia, I hope the outing for your daughter’s birthday was a big hit… I hope your limo ride was a blast. You’ll have to tell us about it.
I’ve got to get to bed, but I wanted to show you something I’ve been working on.
I wanted to try making the Dianna Effner 13″ Little Darlings a swimsuit. I tried one of my Ruby Red Swimsuits on Lian and thought I could figure out how to adjust it in my head… maybe even just shorten the midsection and it might work. WRONG!!
After my first debacle of a swimsuit, I thought maybe I better make a mold of her body, so I used saran wrap and wrapped around the body of Lian. It stuck to itself, so I took some blue painters tape and covered the areas where the swimsuit would go. It looked like this.
I pressed it as flat as I could to get a pretty good replica of her body…making a few markings after I was done.
Then I cut up the back and under the arms…and pressed it flat.
It’s not a flat surface on the body because of her curves, but you just do the best you can… flattening it out.
Then I folded it in half and tried to make a copy of the swimsuit. The problem is, the Little Darlings aren’t symmetrical. They have one shoulder that slopes more than the other one and one hip is a little different too.
You can see from the pattern I cut out for Lian, just how different her body is from the VERY symmetrical Ruby Red Fashion friend dolls.
Lian’s pattern was curved to go over her sloping shoulders…
Here is the pattern cut out of a swimsuit I had…
Not a great look…I didn’t finish any edges on this one… just getting an idea if I was even in the ballpark at getting it right…
My answer was a resounding NO!
So I tweaked my pattern a little bit and tried again with Try #2
Still NO! So I tried tweaking my pattern again for Try #3
By now I was really noticing just how crooked (if you will), the Little Darlings bodies are.
Here is the 4th try…
It was better, but too long in the crotch which caused it to bunch up in the front… and the back shoulders were rippled…
So… I have decided to move on from this. Oh, NO! Jeanne’s a quitter! Summer will be over before I ever get one swimsuit to work for me. I did look up to see if there were any swimsuits for the Little Darlings and I saw one lady who had a pattern for them, but she did her back differently from mine. She had the straps go around the back of the neck and faster with Velcro…(it looked like to me). I know it’s the pattern that Barbara used when she made some swimsuits for her Little Darlings because right below the pattern was a nice review Barbara left for her.
I think I’m just going to keep making dresses for the Little Darlings, as I’m not fond of their body when it’s not covered up. It’s the same with the American Girl dolls… in a swimsuit, I think they look sort of strange, unless it’s a Victorian swimsuit where it’s more like a dress.
Sorry it you wanted me to make swimsuits for the Little Darlings… I just wasn’t enjoying myself as I was sewing them.
I will see you tomrrow,
Blessings, Jeanne
