Sorting and stitching, and reminiscing...

Current Notes : Not too bad, but I think the next will work better ! 

After yesterday’s crushing failure, I decided to rest a bit on the jumpsuit debacle and try the Etsy dress again. Reprinted the pattern at what seemed to be the right size, and got to work. And soon remembered why I didn’t make this dress more than once. It’s hard ! Four darts, tiny straps that are almost impossible to turn right side out… although it’s possible the straps are supposed to be hemmed, not doubled, now that I think of it.

Anyway.  It mostly fits, just a bit too tight, especially over the backside. Further up the back, I have to fold fabric over and tuck the excess inside, so clearly the back pieces need to be redrawn. I’ve already resized it, just a twinge bigger, and maybe I’ll have time to try it tonight. I should also dig out the original, see if I sewed that one any differently.

Oh, and that’s how I use that one stand I can’t find the ‘waist cincher’ part for. It’s around here somewhere, I haven’t broken any yet, but since I have about ten more just like it with the cincher, I like to keep this one the way it is for unusual uses.

I’ve also had a bit of my mind on the move, since both my guys talk about it at least once a day. While I won’t have to get rid of anything – not a single doll, box, book, or prop – I still tend to think of moving as ‘extreme de-hoarding’, and decided to get a bit of a jump-start on it early. Since my bookcase is overflowing, that was a good place to go. The foot-tall stack of mostly-Barbie magazines, especially. I’d meant to go through them when we moved here, but there wasn’t much time, and it was easier to stuff ‘em in a box and drive on.

Today, I grabbed the whole stack and sat down with ‘em. An hour later, I had three stacks – one ready to be donated now, another that had articles I wanted to scan first, then they could also go, and an inch-high collection I wanted to keep. That freed up enough space so that books could actually go in the bookcase, instead of stacked around it. Yaaay !

Since many of them dated back to the 90s (and the Doll Readers were 70s and 80s), it was kind of funny to see how my tastes had changed so much. And how doll ads are vastly different these days – especially since there’s so few magazines left on the subject ! I used to have an even bigger stack of doll magazines, and these were the survivors of that purge. But I think I kept some just ‘cause I ‘spent money’ on ‘em, and with the one article I liked scanned, there was no reason to keep the rest. Magazine or two a day, I’ll be done scanning by Friday. Whoop !