Friday, May 31, 2013

Timey's Trials, Version #1

Current Mood : Pleased. 




It occurs to me that I’m in a unique position to view behavior similar to mine, but one remote over. When MH  first came out, a lot of previously devoted Barbie collectors were interested, some were obsessed, and a lot of fans ended up choosing sides. I completely abandoned Barbie for these new upstarts, and it looks like history repeats itself, especially with dolls. There’s now a big push in Ever After High fandom, with quite a few MH fans abandoning ship for EAH. Now I get to see how the Barbie fans handled it (if I remember correctly, it was mostly ‘If we ignore it enough, maybe those (negative/offensive description) dolls and their fans will go be (negative adjective) elsewhere’. Or, at least, it seemed that way at the time. It was probably closer to, ‘Cute ! Have you seen the new Silkstone vintage-mold Twilight exclusives designed by Bob Mackie available only to Barbie Secret Golden Circle members ?’, but I am sort of harsh and a little bitter.


Mostly because I paid eight bucks to get that darn Headless Headmistress pre-order delivered, and UPS handed it off to the postal service, despite the fact that it was less than 30 miles away for the last two days. If I’m lucky, I’ll get it tomorrow, I may have to wait ‘til Monday, if they decide to just issue a slip. I wouldn’t be so annoyed, but our TRU, the brick and mortar store less than three miles away, has had a shipment of the dolls in since Thursday, and yes, they’re still in stock. I’m so glad I pre-ordered ! I’ll be lucky to get it tomorrow, since our PO would rather leave paper than packages, and by the time they deliver here, the branch has been closed for hours.


So frustrating. Took my mind off things with some sewing. Just wasn’t into MH, and while I have tons of other projects ready for my attention, I decided to take the one that’s waited longest – sewing my own Timey Tell jumper dress ! I’ve wanted to re-make that nearly as long as I’ve loved Timey. I had no idea how I was gonna do it, but even if today’s efforts were a total fail, I’d at least know what didn’t work !


I always thought the easiest way to create a new pattern would be to take an original dress apart, but although I now own three Timey dresses, I just can’t make m’self rip one up. So I pulled out our lightbox and tried to trace the worst of the three dresses – it’s still in good shape, just looks faded next to the other two – and figured I’d take measurements, compare them to the tracing, and go from there. Unlike other similar outfits, this dress has a shoulder seam right at the top, instead of along the underarm. I have no idea why.


Anyway, in about an hour, I had a bodice pattern that worked – only took two tries ! First one was too tight in the armscryes, and that was easy to fix. Bodice isn’t perfect, but it fits, and just to see how it’d go, I gathered a skirt (again using the original’s measurements) and attached it. Yaaay ! I now have a Timey jumper. Now for the hard part – the sleeves and the front piece. While the original looks like a jumper over a blouse, it’s one piece, like many Mattel garments. I have some vague idea on the sleeves, but that ‘blouse’ part is a total wash. I have no idea how I’m gonna do that.



Probably like I did the jumper. Hopefully tomorrow !  While I'm waiting for a package to arrive...

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