wip: blanket drive ripple

Something I've been working on in my knitting club for the last couple of months is this ripple throw. It's for a blanket drive at my mom's church. I'm using leftover random yarn from prior projects, such as these rainbow pillows and this rainbow ripple. I have so many pinks, peaches, blushes, et cetera! I'm also using some cool tones -- some baby blue, some periwinkle purple, some lavender. Nothing too bright and saturated and nothing primary. It's sort of got a pastel twilight vibe, if that makes sense! Like the sky when the sunset is more springy and blue-gray, rather than golden and orangey.

I'm using a lot of variegated yarns, too, as long as they fit with the tones I'm using. There's a variegated yarn that's got pinks and blues and tan in it, and when crocheted together it looks GREEN, so that's why it appears that there's green stripes in here. A couple of the yarns have spots of yellow in the variegation, too. Keeps it from being too boring and samey, I guess!

It's been a long time since I did a ripple with random stripes like this! In fact, the last one I did was my first ever ripple, in 2012. Ever since then, I've done more purposeful patterns or color blocks. Doing random stripes is really, really fun, though. Deciding what comes next, pairing together colors... a lot of it can depend on how much yarn I have left over in a certain color, et cetera.

Not gonna lie, I have gotten like six skeins of yarn for this, because blankets take up a lot more yarn than you would think. I am using up all my pinks and peaches: a feat I thought impossible. So it's not entirely scrap or leftover yarn. But a lot of it is!!

And watch me like this too much to be happy about donating it. -_-

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more drawstring dresses

I have been wanting to post about this but have also been riddled with shyness, haha. Last year I got really into sewing little drawstring dresses! And this spring, to combat my months-long state of inertia, I cannonballed back into doing so. It seems I love nothing more than to develop a whole workflow and produce a whole lot of something, whether it be deer hats, socks, tights, skirts, or these dresses. As a result, I have made far more dresses than I personally need, just because I enjoy the process, and I enjoy picking out fabrics and coordinating thread and ribbon colors.

Someone once asked me if I'd sell these on Etsy, so that's my intention! I also intend to have them be fairly inexpensive -- in the scheme of Blythe doll dresses, anyway! I'm thinking $12?

And only that much because all the sewing I do is by hand. Although these are super simple, it still takes a little while to do all the hand-stitching to construct one dress. While I typically work in batch mode (cut a bunch of dress pieces, iron all the fabric, sew all the dress pieces, iron them all again, sew them all again, actually put the pieces together, put all the ribbon drawstrings in -- in that order, for these), I'd estimate a dress takes about an hour and a half to complete, from cutting the fabric to finished dress.

I can sew together one of these dresses on my machine, but I feel like they don't look as tidy... I'm still trying to befriend my machine.

I think regardless of the fact that these are a) so laughably simple they barely qualify as garments, and b) hand-sewn, which they definitely look, they have a nostalgic charm to them. They remind me of scoring similar dresses and simple hand-sewn items second-hand on Plastic Paradise or Blythe Kingdom back in the day. Some of my most beloved wardrobe items are handmade and slightly wonky.

And I think there's not a whole lot of things like them on the Blythe fashion market right now. I do a fair bit of browsing for Blythe dresses, very specifically, on Etsy. The typical silhouettes of Blythe dresses I see for sale these days are A-line shift dresses (it's always that one pattern, right?? Speaking of nostalgia) or party dresses with a fitted bodice and flared skirt. Sometimes the party dress style looks more babydoll dress in style, but the silhouette is still "fitted top, flared skirt."

I am a huge fan of such a silhouette!! Clean and classic. So, so pretty. But these have a different silhouette and look, with a ribbon tied at one shoulder. While not all that sophisticated, I think they can still be styled really cutely with different colored tights or socks, sweaters or jackets on top, shoes that match the ribbon or a color in the dress... et cetera!

All this to say: I put some of these up on my Etsy. I have a lottt more to take pictures of/list...!

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sewing chair

I did indeed get myself a chair just for my sewing table, as per my b-day list. I was all set to get the pink one, but then I saw there was a green one that was about half the price, so... duh, I got that one instead! Since it arrived, I set it up in front of my sewing table and got my machine out!!

Chair review: It's really light and was fairly easy to put together. Being able to adjust the height in order to comfortably use my sewing machine was imperative for me. It will also be adjustable for when I am filming dolly dressup videos or hauls or whatever else I need. So I am pretty pleased. But I wonder how it will hold up!

I have successfully, in the past, threaded my machine and wound a bobbin and everything. Even sewed some straight lines on some scrap fabric. However, for whatever reason, I got stuck trying to do the same, this second time. I relied on the same videos as I did last time, but it just wasn't working, for some reason. So I hung there in frustrated, intimidated limbo for a while before tackling it again. My mom's sewing a quilt right now so she gave me some guidance. And so I have been practicing, in this, my tiny sewing corner!

I have discovered that my sewing machine doesn't have speed settings. It is either not moving at all or is eating up fabric at 100 mph. I can only rarely find a "sweet spot" on the pedal where it's going a manageable speed. Rather than the pedal being sensitive, it seems like it only knows two speeds. I'm stymied by this right now. I want so, so badly to gain sewing skills and learn how to use my machine and be able to make things. I've successfully made a couple of drawstring dresses but they look a lot worse than my hand-sewn ones do!

Google says there are devices that can cap off the speed of the machine, but I don't know if it's worth spending a chunk of change on such a thing??

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