The Cranberries - Dreams.mp3

I did a load of doll-dressing yesterday. As you might recall, I undressed ALL twenty-one of my girls back in November, and have been slowly dressing them one or two at a time since. I had nine girls dressed, but twelve still standing around naked. I got some kind of bee in my bonnet, I guess, because last night I dressed all twelve of those girls! I don't mind saying it took a few hours. I wasn't even being super picky or trying on/rejecting lots of things. I just enjoyed each dressup, brushed out a few girls' hair, took a while to get out/put away again all of my dolly wardrobe stuff. (I have so much, after fifteen years of collecting.)

One of the first dressups I did was to put Holland in this 90s-ish babydoll dress from PrettyBomb, which I got FOREVER ago, in 2023; I included it in a haul video where I even said, "With a pair of combat boots and knee high socks?? Please." I decided to finally execute the look I was envisioning! I found some yellow knee-high socks in my stash and fortunately I had some black boots without heels.

I wanted to try and make a mood board to see if I could represent the exact 90s fashion moment I was recalling...

This was actually way more time-consuming than it should have been, because the internet doesn't want to show actual 90s fashion pictures when you look up "90s babydoll dress," et cetera. It wants to show you Gen-Z's ideas of what 90s fashion surely was, which is mostly inaccurate and what I would call "tumblr soft grunge" at best. I'm not mad at Gen-Z for this, though. I definitely think they should feel free to take 90s trends and do their own versions, incorporate them into a "now" look; the 90s did that with the 1970s, after all. Every fashion cycle revisits/reinterprets its predecessors. But it's really hard to find actual 90s images for some reason.

The 90s was my childhood (I turned 7 in 1990, and 17 come the year 2000) and I remember veryyy distinct phases of fashion as the decade went on. 1992 fashion (think Full House, still reminiscent of the 80s) does not look like 1998 fashion (think post-grunge: Spice Girls, baby tees, Madonna's "Ray of Light."). You weren't going to find Blossom hats past a certain year (in fact I've never seen anyone revisit Blossom hats -- only bucket hats). Early 90s and late 90s fashion are completely different!

The look I'm going for with Holland here is more early/mid-90s, maybe 1994-ish. Pre-Delia's catalogues. Pre-Hanson. I remember the celestial themes (what might now be called whimsigoth) and the Zodiac motifs all the Claire's jewelry had; the yin-yangs and the smiley faces. Chokers were "in" but those tattoo chokers were not a thing yet. I recall all the Nirvana/Loony Tunes/D.A.R.E. tees and plaid shirts and Vans and baggy jeans (pre-JNCOs). I had plaid babydoll dresses and wore scuzzy navy blue Converse high tops that I'd written/drawn all over. I recall the sheer knee-highs (a la Clueless, hence the inclusion of Cher on the mood board) and Doc Martens and the grunge/skater influence. Even feminine styles had a lot of that grunge influence with more masculine notes. The pink Power Ranger was wearing floral babydoll dresses paired with biking shorts and hiking boots, okay! DJ freaking Tanner looked like a construction worker with a cute bob and a choker.

All that about accuracy and stuff being said, I don't think of this hairstyle as 90s at all, but I don't want to disturb Holland's curls! At the same time, I really wanted to dress Holland in this dress. And I just had these bits of black yarn hanging around because I took them out of Zasha's hair. So, I am just a hypocrite.

Anyway, if I could add a single thing to this outfit, it would be either a little plaid shirt to tie around her waist or a denim vest. Often outfits in this era of the 90s were very bedecked with accessories; lots of silver jewelry, buttons and pins. I think she could use some more visual interest/clutter like that, but I'm not sure what...

Get ready for more doll outfit posts. I took some pics of Citron and Tiphanie today too.

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miniature pillows (or, the care and feeding of my soul)

Yesterday I was feeling pretty heavy and discombobulated, after a few vexing days -- on top of Everything Happening In The World, you know. It has lately felt like life consists of little other than the endless grind of stuff I really don't want to do, but have to do anyway, and unpleasantness, and worry. I knew I needed to do something fun. Something for me and not for other people. So I decided to make some little pillows for my doll furniture. I'm in a miniatures phase right now and recently reacquainted myself with the other little cushions and crochet blankets I made in years past. I've only made a few cushions, actually!! I think three? So I decided I need to make scads more!

I found this floral fabric with a very small scale (so satisfying when you're working with doll stuff!!) in my stash and also remembered that last year my wonderful friend Anne sent me a whole little box full of really fun sewing/crafting notions! Miniature buttons in every imaginable color, lots of trims of various sorts, little silk flowers, jump rings -- even more than I can name off the top of my head. It was so exciting to bust out all these extra materials and find the ideal pom-pom trim!! The olive color matched the tiny leaves in this floral fabric PERFECTLY!

So, I intended to make a square pillow and a round pillow. Figuring out how to add the pompom trim to a pillow kind of blew my little dumb sewing mind. I began to sew it on but realized belatedly that once I turned the pillow right-side-out to stuff, the trim would be stuck on the inside of the pillow. Order of operations in sewing really matters and I have messed this up on many occasions in the past. So I ended up just finishing sewing on the trim to one of my circles of fabric and deciding it could be a little tablecloth of some sort!

It fits this little antique store wicker table pretty exactly! (For the circle shapes I was using, I literally traced around the bottom of a can of cranberry sauce. Use what you got!)

On the second go at the round pillow, I managed to figure out the method needed to sew the pompom trim between my two fabric circles. It was sort of tough when it came time to turn the pillow out properly and stuff it, because I had about an inch of pompom trim to tuck between the now right-side-out fabric layers and also I needed to try and fold the fabric layers in on themselves as well. It made for a very rough patch of visible stitching (in the picture below you can see it along the bottom of the pillow) because I don't really know stitches or techniques to better deal with this kind of thing. I think it is neither noticeable nor important, haha. These little pillows are just photography/video/setup props.

On the square pillow, I randomly decided to attach an applique I found in my stash. I got a bunch of these little miniature doily appliques from the Michael's dollar section ten years ago (at least) and I still have a few packets of them. I was going to pop a button in the middle of the pillow anyway, because I like that look, and decided to make the button the middle of the flower shape. Eeee!

I just had myself the best little time sewing yesterday. I kept thinking, "I am just having the time of my life right now!" It was such a profound balm to my sore and ragged soul.

I've mentioned this a couple of times, I feel like (here and there), but it is difficult to thrive amongst continuous news cycles and social media algorithms that bury you in bad news on the daily. That is by design, because scary and negative things get a lot of attention. More views, more clicks, more discussion. One way people try to protect themselves and deal with scary things is by knowing everything possible, to feel prepared and in-the-know about the latest horrific development in the news or in more random internet rabbitholes -- whatever. But then their algorithms get trained to feed them more of that stuff, until it feels like the entire world is a horror show consisting of nothing but awful people and conspiracies and the latest thing certain evil people said. I'm not strictly talking politics, although that's a huge part of it. But even seemingly positive things like staying self-educated with regards to health topics can get twisted by the algorithm into health fear-mongering and distrust in medical professionals, et cetera. Most people aren't being careful with what they digest online, or considering their sources.

I have a couple of family members sucked into this type of self-perpetuating engine. Constantly sucking down soul poison. I do care about the state of the world and about my fellow humans; I care about corruption and injustice and evil. And I will vote against them, and protest against them, and live my life according to the things I believe are good and right. But just don't want to think about and discuss the latest alarming development in an ongoing bad news cycle every single day. I just can't inject myself with soul-killing stuff on the daily. Maybe a lot of people are stronger than me and can do that without huge mental health ramifications. But I can't. I have to want to live in this world. I have to live in a brain, a body, that works against me and tells me enough bad things already. I have to use my limited time on this planet in a way that makes me glad to be here. If I'm not feeding my soul, if I am not nourishing it with the things it needs, then it is not just sitting around, stalling in neutral, unharmed. No. It is getting constantly worn down and damaged by outside forces and it will ultimately wither and die. I have to, I have to, take care of it. Or else what is the POINT of anything.

I am expressing this here instead of just dropping a fun little post with some pics and vamoosing because Cure Touch is entirely emblematic, to me, of my constant, consistent choice to try and center any joy I can for myself. I have needed it for that purpose since its inception. And I need to reiterate its purpose now. And my purpose. To myself, if almost no one else. For a long while now my about page has stated: "I believe creating and defining happiness for yourself, and in maintaining a healthy relationship with online content." I wrote that, I'm pretty sure, ten-plus years ago. Curating and being intentional with the online sphere has only become more vital. It has become harder, too.

And I am posting all this with this post because I am being so serious and for real when I say that making little pillows for my doll furniture was so good for my soul. It made me so happy. I was hurting for something like this activity.

I am going to make some more soon.

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strawberry springtime

Got a yen to do another little setup with some miniatures. Recently I dressed Fidelia and Beatrix in some duds from the Strawberry Shortcake fashion sets I blogged about here (and which I scored from Five Below). I really, really love this plaid dress with the double ribbons at its drop waist! I'm not sure that it's a drop waist on the doll for which it is meant, but on Beatrix, it sure is.

(Other outfit roundup deets: Fidelia's skirt is from PrettyBomb and she's wearing Didee Eureka's stock Mary Janes. Beatrix's sneakers are from thehandflower.)

Another Strawberry Shortcake thing I got from Five Below recently is this Teeny Tinies! Strawberry's Bake Shop Set. It was $5, of course, and came with 20 pieces, some of which I like and some of which I don't. But that's a great price for a handful of miniatures I do like. I'm kinda miniatures-crazy right now so I actually got three sets of Teeny Tinies! miniatures... Anyway, I used several items from this specific set here!

Most from the Strawberry's Bake Shop Set -- the cart and everything on top of the cart -- but the doughnuts on the lower tray, the teacups, and the pink lemonade bottle are craft store miniatures.

I got out one of my Michael's not-doll-furniture benches from a couple of years ago, some 1:6-ish scale cushions I hand-sewed eons ago, and this little bunny! Because of course! Easter!

I was pretty tickled just setting all this up and taking photos. But I decided to take some footage with my phone, too, and edit together a small reel or short or whatever you want to call it. Here 'tis:

Notes on this little video:

• I don't know how to edit videos on my phone. I must admit my ignorance here. I have abandoned social media several times since 2016 (due to mental health/feeling unable to cope with the state of the world at large), don't use TikTok at all, etc. I'm not a short form content girlie. So I kind of missed the boat on editing together content for platforms that have made strong moves towards it. Like, I do not know what app people are using to make their videos?!!?! iMovie? Capcut? What is the proper workflow for that? I only know how to use Adobe Premiere on my desktop computer. So I used that to edit this, uploaded it to the cloud, and used the Reels app on my phone just to put a slight lighting filter over the finished product, to try and get the virulent colors to be more true to life.
• Yes, the background music is me playing my Omnichord!!! Because I am really interested in using it for stuff like this. I just placed it on my desk where my keyboard is and aimed a mic at its speaker! So, you can hear not only the output, but you can actually hear me pressing the buttons. It sounds to me like a music box with that kind of clicking. And I am just playing through the first verse of "In the Golden Afternoon" from Disney's Alice in Wonderland on it. I'm really tickled this worked alright.

I'm spending so much of my time on band stuff -- pretty much since I joined it, last summer, my time's really been sucked away by it -- but lately I'm feeling a lot of desire to try and pack my own individual hobbies back onto my plate. I want to do doll stuff, I want to sew more little cushions and pillows for my doll furniture, I want to sew some little clothes!

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