Resource Center Musings

I found this notepad in my stack of paper when we were moving all of our stuff from the garage back to the office.  I think this says it all... and I'm a contender!!

A notepad from my desk

In previous posts and in my blog header I've talked about my stash.  I've discussed the reasons why I believe a serious sewist should have a stash. 

1. When your colors are out of season, or the stores want to sell brown and you like black, you can shop where the proprietor stocks what you need.
2. When you want to sew at 11 p.m. or 5 a.m. and the stores aren't open yet, you're good to go.
3. When you have to make a blue monster costume on Sunday night for Monday morning, well, you get the picture!!

So you probably weren't surprised when I showed my stack of bins...

or my boxes of patterns...

But did I tell you that I ran completely out of muslin??  Or that I somehow have failed to store even one single black zipper of ANY size?  How does this happen?

I recently decided to take inventory of my sewing supplies, just for curiosity's sake, and perhaps to give a list of things to my insurance man for a rider on my homeowners policy.

I have approximately $300 worth of sewing machine needles. 

I have six different kinds of straight pin and three magnetic pincushions.  And before you comment, yes I DO use the various kinds of pins.  Maybe not daily but they gather no dust!  When I decide to cut patterns out, I will sometimes do as many as a dozen projects, and I leave SOME pins in each piece, so some are out of circulation, in the baggies I use for my 'ready to sew' kits.

You've seen these before...

I spent some time in the resource center trying to finish up DD's quilt so I can move on to other things.  I have a blouse to put button holes into, and another one that needs some interfacing.  I have about oh maybe 45 yards of interfacings in my resource center.  When I find it on sale at 50% off I buy 10 yards of the light weight or medium weight, and any time I find the stuff that's sold by Palmer & Pletsch, I get several packages of each weight in black and white.

Recently I donated two baggies of flat buttons to our preschool for craft projects.  I barely made a dent in the button collection.  But I did thin out the singles and the big buttons that didn't really appeal to me anymore.  I'm happy to make some 3 and 4 year olds happy.  :-)

What I didn't realize was how many SCRAPS I have saved over time!!  I used to make doll clothes, in fact I started my sewing career making clothes for my Barbie dolls.  I have an affinity for things Barbie.  I loved her professional outfits, I get a fluttery feeling in my tummy thinking about an outfit I bought her way back when, with its Chanel style jacket and matching purse and heels!!  My Barbie was stylin'!

SO I sorted out my scraps into a couple of piles -- Barbie-sized pieces, 18" doll sized pieces and baby doll/Cabbage Patch pieces.

You know those big plastic bins that hold however many gallons??  You know, the ones up near the top of this blog??  Well, there are two that are full of potential 18" and baby doll outfits, and the potential Barbie outfits fill a half-sized bin.  I guess I'd better get to work!!

Know any naked Barbies??  I guess you could send them my way...

Laughing out loud ---

Keep on sewing!

Doll Clothes

I love dolls and their wardrobes.  Actually some of the first sewing I ever did was for dolls.  I remember taking my babysitting money to buy a Barbie doll when the first ones came out.  They were easy to dress because the clothes only took two square inches of fabric!!  Not really but you know what I mean.

About 20 years ago I found a doll that my mother had packed away.  I'm not sure whose doll it was, I don't remember ever seeing it.  She might have purchased it at a rummage or the Goodwill, as she sometimes picked up toys to fix up for her visiting family to play with.  This doll was left behind when she and my dad divorced and split house.  It was a sad little orphan, probably paper mache or maybe some kind of early plastic.  She doesn't feel like a modern doll.  She's almost 16 inches high, with a child's body and eyes that close when you lay her down.  Her hair was in sad, sad condition.  No amount of washing and combing could save it.  It was a wig applied with glue, so I removed it.

That bald doll bothered me a lot!  I bought a doll wig at a craft store and gently applied it to her head.  She looked amazing!  It was a brown curly wig that probably belonged on a Victorian lady doll, so I trimmed it up, and to me she resembles Shirley Temple!

She had a red plaid dress on when I found her, but it was also in pretty awful shape. I wanted to make her a new dress.  I purchased some doll dress patterns that had multiple sizes, but nothing really had the right fit, although some came close.  I made her a blue plaid dress with some white lace.   It fits, but probably not well.  So at least she was dressed.

Now when my dear daughter was small, she had some Cabbage Patch dolls.  Moms over a certain age will remember how we dashed all over town trying to buy those dolls one Christmas in the 80's.  I spent more money than I care to admit because DD wanted one!  And I made a bunch of clothes for that doll and her subsequent siblings.  Those clothes were fun, almost like baby clothes.  In fact, we reused some of her old baby clothes for Tommy and Olivia... as they were named.

Fast forward to the birth of my first grand.  This child, a girl, gave me the opportunity I needed to play with dolls!  Alas.  She did - not - like - dolls!  She was into DOGS.  She had (and may still have) about 5 million stuffed dogs.  You could get almost any species of dog in the fake fur variety, and she had LOTS!!

One day I was knitting a sweater for someone's baby, and she decided her dog needed a sweater too.  Makes sense I guess.  So I made a yellow sweater for one dog and a blue scarf for another dog, and a red sweater for a Clifford dog.  I knitted sweaters for teddy bears that came to live with us too.  But ix-nay on the olls-day!! 

I was still adding to my doll collection, but since no one was going to actually play with them, I bought the ones that I was most fond of.  I bought one of those famous 18" dolls, but I also picked up some nice porcelain dolls, mostly at rummages or Goodwill.  They were all wearing lovely dresses, and they look so beautiful on my bookcase.

The addition of two more granddaughters was occasion for hope... maybe one of them will love dolls too.  Happily, I can say that BOTH of them love dolls.  The dolls I bought are finally being played with properly!

I have for a long time had a big box of scraps in my sewing room marked "For Dolls".  I've always made clothes for dolls, for my DD and her friends, for my cousins and for friends' kids.  I like how you can make an outstanding outfit with small bits and pieces.  I don't even mind making tiny clothes for those 11 inch fashion dolls -- although I am happy that they are not so unrealistically shaped now.  Really, no one could actually LOOK like that, they'd fall on their faces before they could move!

Today I made a bunch of outfits for the auction that will be taking place at our church in April.  The youth group is earning money to pay for a trip to North Carolina, where they will be building houses with Habitat for Humanity and teaching a Vacation Bible Study.  Sewing those little dresses, skirts and tee shirts was more fun knowing they're going to a good cause.  I hope the little girls who are gifted with those items enjoy playing with them.

Here are a few pictures.  I'll post about the process tomorrow.

Yellow cotton dress with lace trim.

Denim jumper and sweater knit with self striping sock yarn.

Yellow pants and tee with fleece vest

Sew on!