Echinacea!

She is finished! My beautiful dryad girl!

I don't have that much to say except LOOOKIEEEEEEE!

 

I wound up not taking process photos of the flower crown and skirt ferns. If you're really curious, I'll just tell you. If you're not curious, suffer. I cut up a green t shirt into strips and stretched it out to the edges curled in on themselves n wouldn't fray. Then I sewed 3 strips together at one end, braided them until they were long enough to go around the doll's head, and sewed the free ends and the bound ends together.

Then I dug through my box of fake flowers from when flower crowns were a trend in 2014, and found small ones, and poked them in between the strands of the braid, dabbing a little tacky glue on the backside where the stem poked out. When the glue was dry I trimmed the stems. It was pretty genius, I say.

And the skirt ferns came from that same box, but I poked their stems in between the brown stitches where I sewed on the waistband. Nothing really keeping them there but tension. Hope they stay.

 

In other terrific dolly news, I visited an old boss/teacher/friend of mine after several years of not seeing her, and I was telling her about all my art projects, including the Echinacea project, and she revealed that she collects AG dolls too! She couldn't take me inside to show me her collection cause covid, but she sent me pictures later. Do you know how rare it is to meet another doll lover in real life? Super rare. I think she's the first one, actually, other than my younger cousin who got me into them in the first place. Do you know how rare it is to meet an AG doll lover older than my parents? Super duper rare! And of course she's indoctrinating her new granddaughter into AG with a Bitty Baby.

Newest cutie and sewing adventures!

 Whaddup gang! the gang is small. There's like one of you. Hi, Quinnley! *waves*

It seems American Girl released new dolls when I wasn't looking. Courtney the 80's girl caught me by surprise already- I went to the Seattle AG place back in the winter before it closed (*sheds a single tear for the AGIG meetups that were held there*) and picked up her bowling-alley-carpet-lookin pieces. Love that. Who knows when these new Truly Mes came out, but when I saw that 89 had streaks of blue and green in brown hair, I HAD to have her. My hair is blue and green and brown too!!!

I just ADORE it. Ive been infodumping to my non-doll collector friend about this and even she agrees that this hair is majestic af.

But the thing about getting new dolls is that I HAVE to have a name and personality or backstory picked out beforehand, otherwise I will just have a hunk of vinyl I know nothing about.

So! Her name is Echinacea and she's going to be a dryad. Now I know the name of a flower doesn't seem quite right for a tree spirit, but I knew it had to start with an E and be nature-inspired, and it was the best I could come up with even after looking through official latin plant species names and greek mythological figure names.

 

Now what I'm going for is like.... renaissance faire costume. But, strangely enough, Etsy doesn't have any doll outfits that are cute, the aesthetic I want, well-fitting, and in my price range. So I have to make my own.

To start out, I have a duplicate of Josefina's Beforever meet outfit, since my cousin and I had some of the same things. So I took the Josefina camisa and dyed it this teal with some RIT dye I found in the garage. And I used a seam ripper to take out the ruffles on the sleeves. Thinking about doing the same thing with the neckline. We'll see.

 

And I want a skirt and I want it to be made out of leaves! Maybe that's aiming a little high.

For this, I took a fat quarter from the quilting store that had been floating around my room for a while. I cut a circle out of the middle. If I REALLY cared, I would have measured around her waist to find the circumfrence of the circle I needed, divided by pi to find the diameter, and divided THAT in half to find the radius so I could measure that distance out from the center of the square in 4 directions and then draw a circle connecting those points. But I didn't really care and instead used my patented Cut And Hope Method. Works every time! (works maybe half the time.)

 

To make the waistband, I cut a chunk off the fat quarter that was uhhh more than 2 inches wide? and happened to be a bit longer than her waist measurement. This is pure dumb luck, people. The Cut And Hope Method is really serving me for this project. So I folded that in half lengthwise, and then tucked the edges up into the fold so there are no raw edges. This may be called bias tape. But it may not. Its not cut on the bias or anything. Then I sandwiched the top edge of the skirt in between them.

Got it all together with a cute running stitch and brown embroidery thread.

 

Ok but now what will she wear as a top? I felt like it should be brown. And I had some brown felt! lucky me.

So I made this... What is this? A corset? A bustier? A vest? I'm calling it a vest. 

I made this vest by tracing the top half of a t-shirt pattern and cutting it down to size using Guess and Check. This is a real method that 4th graders use to do math. It is a real method I use to go about my life. Anywho felt stays together pretty nice and won't fray, so I wasn't worried about raw edges.

But to get the pieces together, I used cross stitches, which makes for EXCELLENT detail work if i do say so myself.

 

 

The final two steps were making closures for these clothing pieces. I poked holes with the fattest embroidery needle I had down the front of the vest, and threaded this leather lacing from an old bead kit through.

This was also my first time doing a button. I cut that hole and bound up the edges myself. I'm mad skilled. Ran all the way through the woods to my grandma's house to dig through her button box and found that lovely redwood button. The vibes are impeccable.

But this outfit isn't done yet! I still want it to be made of leaves! I'm gonna poke stems into the waistband. Oh and I wanna make her a flower crown! So tune in next time for more sewing excitement!

-Gwen

Andie and Rylan

Pride month is over. Like Way, way over. But here are Rylan and Andie, as gay and as proud of it as ever. So nice of that rainbow to show up for them ; )

I added it in PhotoscapeX, some free editing software that I'm trying to replace Aperture with. Aperture won't even open anymore. Has a little grayed out "no" symbol over its icon in the dock. Guess its finally truly dead. Photoscape x is pretty fun though. More features like adding rainbows.

 

(reminder to give your gf a smooch on she forehead)

 

Another one I've been considering trying is Photopea, which, i hear, is just photoshop copied element for element. Pretty poggers. But idk how to use photoshop so there will be a learning curve for using photopea too. If I learn how to use the clone stamp tool, then I can start using sticks to prop dolls up and have them do more dynamic poses.

 

This guitar is the only part of Tenney's collection I liked. Its exclusively Rylan's now. She likes to play Brandi Carlile covers on it. Here, she was singing Caroline. Now, she is practicing Wherever Is Your Heart. Andie tries to sing along, but she isn't any good. Not that Rylan cares- she thinks her girlfriend has the cutest voice in the world and is enamored just at her trying.

Happy pride month every month from Andie and Rylan! Long live the lesbians!!

-Gwen