Sewing a BJD Sundress (mostly) by Hand

This one is a project that had been sitting at the back of my mind for a while before I got around to actually doing any real work on it, and by "a while" I mean "several months." Which is pretty much par for the course for me. Actually, I finished making this dress back in July, and then entirely neglected to write a post about it through all of August. It was a busy summer, sue me.

I get a lot of my fabric at secondhand stores, because I'm... cheap, and that's where I found a yard or so of blue and white striped seersucker, which I thought would make a really cute doll-sized sundress. I had a pretty good idea of the style of dress I wanted to make right away, though I did do a couple of basic sketches to see how I liked certain design elements. 

Free Knitting Pattern: Ribbed Halter Top for MSD/45cm BJDs

This is a very simple, beginner-friendly project that knits up fairly quickly thanks to the lack of sleeves, but makes for a cute, versatile top with lots of layering potential. It's worked in the round from the bottom up until you reach the underarms, at which point you'll bind off roughly half of your stitches and work the rest of the front and the collar flat.

As simple as it is, this is the first time I've written a knitting pattern that anyone other than myself has to try to follow, so please let me know if any of my instructions are unclear! I'll do my best to clarify. I'll also include more photos at the end of the post, for reference's sake.

Note: this pattern was designed for a doll with a 19cm bust, 12.8cm waist, and 21cm hip measurement. The ribbing makes it fairly stretchy so it'll likely fit other similarly-sized dolls well, but you may need to make adjustments depending on your doll's proportions.

Astrid's Dagger Collar Shirt

I've always been fond of "retro" and mid-century aesthetics, and despite the gradual pace at which I've been piecing things together for Astrid, I've had those kind of 1960s and 1970s styles in mind for how I wanted to style her right from the get-go. (A lot of the inspiration for Myrtle's look comes from the same era.) A while ago I found some great fabric at my local yarn and quilt store and thought it would be perfect to make one of those button-down shirts from the '70s with the big collars at a doll scale. The magic of the internet has helpfully informed me that this is called a "dagger collar" - hence the title of this post.

I'm still not the most confident drafting patterns from scratch in this scale, so I decided to start with the JID Girl Shirt Pattern from Antique Lilac as a base. There's a very detailed and helpful tutorial for how to put the shirt together (which I referenced frequently!) at the link, so I'm mostly just going to talk about the modifications I made.

Astrid's Pajama Set - Part 1 (the shirt)

Either shortly before or shortly after Astrid arrived - at this point I don't actually remember which - I found a roll of very cute striped flannel on clearance in the remnants section of my local Fabricland. (I love remnants and clearance sections of fabric stores. I think this roll cost me around $4, and I still have plenty left over after what I used for this project.) The scale of the print was a bit large for most of the 1/6 dolls I had at home - but would be pretty perfect to make a cute 1/4 scale pajama set.

This is a project that I technically started before this blog was more than an offhand thought, though it got picked up and set down many, many times before I actually finished it. I'm actually going to be splitting it up between two posts, one for the shirt and one for the pants. We're going to end up jumping around in time a bit, but I'm starting with the top because even though I started it last, I finished it first. Listen, the ADHD meds only do so much. 

A new arrival: Dream Valley Peanut

Listen, I was going to be good. I told myself I didn't need any more dolls. I had plenty of plans for Astrid alone to keep me busy for a long time to come. I certainly didn't need to spend any more money. But... well...

I was window shopping on Alice's Collections, and I kind of fell in love. And he was in stock, and on sale, and I had some extra money left over from the holidays, so... after several days of thinking about it, I placed an order for the creature.

In his natural habitat: my extremely cluttered desk.

I mean, can you blame me? Look at him! That big ol' eye, those little rat-like paws, the tail almost twice as long as his entire body, those things on his head that could just as easily be ears or horns... he's such a weird, funny-looking little guy. I'm obsessed with him.

Some new knits

I've done quite a bit of knitting for dolls in my time. In fact, the very first finished project I can ever remember knitting was a matching scarf and hat for my Maplelea Girl Saila as a kid. Recently, a lot of it has been making tiny sweaters for little Myrtle, like this fuzzy turtleneck:

Making a Doll-Sized Dress Form

This post contains doll nudity, if that wasn't already incredibly obvious.

When I got my first resin BJD, I decided that one of the first things I wanted to make for her was a dress form. I sew a lot of my own clothes for my dolls, usually from patterns I made myself, and I knew that resin required more careful handling than, say, playline vinyl and plastic dolls. A dress form made to match her measurements would give me a way to draft and test the fit of patterns without the risk of staining her resin or damaging any body blushing I might do on her in the future. Also, I thought it would be fun.

An introductory post

Well, here we are. It felt weird to just leave this place empty, so I guess we have to start somewhere.

A quick introduction: hi, I'm Sammy, I'm a grown adult who still plays with dolls. I do a lot of sewing, knitting, and otherwise crafting for my little collection, and I wanted a place to talk about my projects where I could include more detailed, long-form discussions about my process and everything that goes along with it.

I do occasionally post about my doll hobby on other social media, which you can find in the sidebar. If you want something more substantial, though, the real meat of the doll project posting, this is gonna be the place to be.

My first "real" post is likely to cover a project I'm working on now for my first 1/4 scale BJD, and will probably be up in a few days' time. In the meantime, I have a newly-minted "About" page you can check out if you're interested. Otherwise... see you soon!