25. Doll Clothes Pattern Club
Doll clothes dress for a 14" Glitter Girl doll or Wellie Wisher doll - paid subscribers
Hi, I’m Val Spiers and my intention is to make my life better everyday and share my insights.
Post 25/1000 (6.4 - 2024)
In this week’s newsletter:
I share the steps I took to reduce the 18” pattern to a 14” pattern and offer the new design to my paid subscribers.
So, a few weeks ago I had a customer from my Etsy shop ask if I could make the Pieced A-Line dress into one to fit the Wellie Wisher dolls that are 14” tall. As soon as I got the message I said I would see what I could do and I sat down at my computer and resized the pattern. It was a good challenge. Not too hard and not too easy.
For the past few months I have been trying to get back the fun of designing doll clothes. The trouble is that when I sit down to design I feel pressured to produce a new design from idea to completed product in a set time to ad to my newsletter. It tends to take some of the fun out of the process.
When this random request came up it felt like fun again.
Within a few days I had the pattern pieces drafted to fit my Glitter Girl doll. I have been using my elastic habit tracker to block out each day I work on the pattern. In order to make it easy to make progress every day I have 2 versions of tasks for my pattern production. Version 1 is 15, 30 or 60mins on any existing pattern work. Version 2 is 15, 30 or 60mins designing or drawing a new pattern. This gives me plenty of opportunity to complete a task every day. I’m not recording the level I managed - Minimum, Medium or High - I am just recording that I made progress on a task.
Right now as I write this I have 3 days blocked out and I know I will be able to keep it going until I finish the designs I am working on now. The writing I am doing right now is part of my planner to dos. I have listed, read 10 pages of a book and work on a newsletter draft. It’s getting close to my bedtime but I wanted to tick off both the items for today so I am spending 15 mins or so writing.
The 14” doll clothes pattern is the same as the Pieced A-Line Dress I did for the 18” doll. I had to reduce it to 80% but then I had to make it narrower. Such a shame for everybody that it doesn’t just take a single % reduction from the 18” doll to the the 14” doll. Using Adobe Illustrator lets me put the pattern pieces on different layers and line them up to make sure they all fit together neatly. It also lets me resize skirt pieces easily and create the lining pieces.
I have some muscle soreness in my right arm and it affects the strength in my fingers. You wouldn’t believe how many times I have to use my pointer finger to press or pull strongly. I have had to use my left hand for pump spray bottles and strong trigger spray bottles. I have had to ask my husband to open my ring pull baked beans tin. I have to use my left hand for the reverse lever on my sewing machine and it is really hard to type. It’s getting better but my arm feels really weak now rather than sore.
I also had a lot of trouble pulling the back of the 14” dress through the shoulder gap to turn it right side out. I dreaded doing the second side. It made me think that I need to get rid of that step all together and put a bias strip facing on the neck. It’s just as fiddly as pulling the backs through the shoulder tunnel but it doesn’t require the same finger strength.
When you become a paid subscriber you get access to the download links for all the resources that I use to make my life great. I don’t just jump up every morning excited for the coming day. I plan and make lists and track in the background so I nearly always feel happy and excited. Anything that is worthwhile takes effort and making a good life is definitely worth it.
This month’s pattern club pattern is View 1 of the pieced A-Line for the 14” dolls.
Cheers,
Val