Fun with fringe !

Current Mood : Still tired. 

Interesting day. Dearest Son’s appointment went well, and he really spoke up about his concerns and health issues this time. Part of it was the great doctors – heck, I wanted to hang out with ‘em. But for once, I shut up and let him talk. I’m so used to being his advocate and voice, it’s an adjustment, but I can make it. As usual, though, when it was all over, I crashed for two straight hours.  

With everything going on, I missed a day of the Monster High LiveJournal group, so the first message I saw was headed “Discontinue Dolls ?”. I wondered if I’d missed an announcement from Mattel deciding to stop production of the entire line or something. Yeah, it seems silly to drop anything that must be making them money, but who knows what’s really going on. Could be they’re getting pressure, or the dolls are harder to manufacture than expected, they’re not making the money they projected, the return rate is too high, distribution is too badly borked to continue, any one or a dozen out of a hundred facets could go wrong, and could lead to a ‘heck with it’ decision at any time. Sales could be the least of the issues surrounding this line.

Thing is, I wasn’t upset. I thought that it’d be great if they’d at least get the classroom playset distributed, but even without it, I had plenty of dolls and lots of fun ahead with them – truth be told, I really didn’t need more. I can sew, I can craft, I can learn, I can save up and buy from other craftspeople. Not a tragedy.

Turns out, the writer was simply wondering if production on the earliest 2010 dolls had ceased – the first six Basics and Wave 1 of ‘Dawn of the Dance’. Nobody knew the answer to that one, either. I kinda figure Mattel has – ya can’t keep making the old stuff when you’re constantly distributing new – but I don’t know for sure. Kinda ranks for new fans, and I can be smug about it since I was waiting to pounce back in that Summer of 2010, but I’ve also had to deal with ‘But I was waiting for them to go on markdown !’ comments. Um, a line the retailers can’t put out on shelves fast enough, or even keep on shelves for longer than two weeks, is unlikely to go on markdown, unless there’s a chain-wide sale or the dolls are damaged. I don’t even know what led anyone to begin to think that way.

Got some sewing done – the new version of the blouse works, but kind of bags in the back, and the sleeves are a bit long. Can fix the latter easily, not sure about the former. I mean, I kinda like for a blouse to be big enough to wear over a skirt’s waistband sometimes. I think I’ll trim down the back just an eighth of an inch on one side, see of that’ll work better. For now, I can always fold in a bit of extra fabric on the back for a closer fit showing at the front.

I then noticed that I had just a strip of that faux-denim fabric left from the shorts I made. It was already fraying pretty badly, but I liked the way it looked. Experimented with a section of cutaway and figured how to ‘hem’ the edge without getting rid of the fringed fraying. It was just long enough for a simple skirt, too. So, that’s what I made. I’m also tweaking closures these days, making the ‘rough’ side of the Velcro ™ narrower than the soft side. That way, I can adjust the fit a bit, depending on the look I want or the shirt she’s wearing. Plus, for some reason, I have a lot more ‘soft’ half than I do of ‘rough’. So this lets me use more of the surplus.