Secret Snarker 2019 Part 3

I got a lovely Snarker present from supergreenchiligirl! She is better known as Inky's mom.

This was such a thoughtful gift, and it put a huge smile on my face.

I got a lovely card, candy, guinea pig stickers, S'more PJs, a mini Baby Kermit figure, and an assortment of doll food!

It was all perfect, and a great surprise.

Here is Anne with some of the goodies!

Here is Anne wearing the S'more PJs and holding Baby Kermit.

I wanted the PJs whether or not they fit Anne (who is PC and therefore chubbier) but they did fit her!
I am so happy!

I was also excited about the Baby Kermit figure.

I was a huge Muppet Baby fan back in the day, and I have a Baby Fozzie figure, an old McDonald's toy, who can hang out with Baby Kermit.

I guess I need to take better pictures of the doll food, I haven't done that yet.

I was very happy with my Snarker gifts!

Thank you, supergreenchiligirl!

Secret Snarker 2019 Part Two

I have been making my swap partner a doll quilt as part of the Secret Snarker exchange.

 I had several ideas on what to make this year, but I had some Canadian flag fabric I had been saving in case I ever had a swap partner in Canada, so I decided to use that.

This quilt is a bit bigger than most of the doll quilts I make, but I based the size on the very large blanket that comes with Melody's bed.

I wanted a simple quilt where the design would not overwhelm the fabric, but I also wanted to do something a bit different than just a lot of squares together.

This quilt is, in my opinion, very modern looking and very versatile.

Jess likes it!

Yes, she is still wearing Christmas pajamas, because they are stinking cute on her, and they match the quilt colors anyway.

I also made four mini doll books from Jinjia Mixed Goods for the swap. They are all fantasy themed.

Jess is reading The Golden Compass in this picture.

So, I hope my swap partner is happy!

I also hope she likes the color red. It was a total accident that everything turned out to be red!

Secret Snarker 2019

It's Secret Snarker time again!

I always have so much fun sewing for someone else, who has maybe different interests than I do.
It really stretches my creativity.

This year I was assigned to thecatsme0w at American Girl Collectors.

One of the dolls that she wanted to receive things for is Luanne, her Western Girl who lives on a ranch. Luanne is a #46.

To create some clothes for Luanne, I used Simplicity pattern number 8359.

This is a pattern made by American Girl, and it features Western clothes. I owned this pattern but had not used it before.

I actually made two things from this pattern.

I made the dress from View B.

Meritaten is acting as my model here.

This dress looked like something within my skill set, and it was, but it had a lot a lot of pattern pieces.
It was very intimidating when I cut them all out.

I decided that if I better make the dress immediately, or I would procrastinate and make a mental block.

I got in done all in one day, and was pleasantly surprised.

The dress is very cute and looks like the one on the pattern cover.

I also made a skirt from View B of the pattern.

Saige is my model here!

I did not make this T-shirt. I bought a lot of them at the MCM benefit, so I am including one in this swap.

The skirt is tiered and has a horseshoe print on it. The tiers are not photographing well, but it truly is adorable in person.

There you can see the tiers!

I made the dress on the same day as the skirt, so I did a LOT of ruffles that day.

The skirt has a very retro vibe to it to me. I thought maybe the skirt's back story could be that it once belonged to Luanne's mother, so it is Luanne's lucky skirt.

I did not mean to make everything red for this swap. It just kind of happened that way. I hope the recipient likes red!

As far as Simplicity pattern 8359, I was pretty happy with it. It was super convenient to have this Western pattern on hand when I needed it.

Like I said, the dress pattern looked very intimidating when I cut out the pieces, but it went together well.

Also, I think this dress pattern could be used to re-create one of the dresses from Lea's collection, the Celebration Outfit. It does not have to be Western if you don't want it to be.

2017 Secret Snarker Pictures

Ludodactylus from American Girl Collectors took some pictures with the items I made for her for the Secret Snarker Swap last year.

I love seeing other people's dolls wearing things that I made! She very kindly agreed to let me share the pictures on the blog.

Here is Kirsten's quilt:

Kirsten is wearing her shawl and Samantha is wearing her ice cream dress:

Kirsten, Sari and the quilt:

The pictures are adorable! Thank you so much for sharing, Ludodactylus!

Here is my original post about Kirsten's items, and here is my original post about Samantha's dress.

Cedar and Amelle

Items bought at MCM are not supposed to be resold and are not eligible for free repairs from the company.

Cedar, Stella and Amelle

Dolls and some other items have an X marked on their bottom to show that they came from MCM.

Most items also have their barcode marked out.

In the doll collecting community, it is considered acceptable to pick up a doll for another collectors as long as you are only reimbursed for the original cost of the doll and shipping, and do not make a profit on it.

There were a lot of requests on American Collectors this year. I was not able to fill most of them.

I planned to buy two dolls and Melody's bed for myself, and I agreed to pick up dolls for three other people instead. Since you have to carry everything you buy out to the car, that was as many as I could handle for sure! 

To be honest, five dolls was probably more than I could handle. I bought two dolls and a bed, and I wore a hole in the bottom of the brand new bag that I was carrying them in.  I am sad about that.

One of the dolls I was looking for was JLY 58. By the time I got there, there was only one 58 left, and she had permapanties, so I did not buy her.

I got a 66 who is named Cedar for greenchiligirl and a 62 who is named Amelle for BeauCouer. I am so glad I was able to bring two dolls home, even if I am not keeping them. I always warn people that I keep the dolls for a couple of days and take pictures  of them. 

I enjoy doing this, and I think it's nice that the dolls get to see a bit more of Wisconsin than just the inside of the warehouse. It's sort of a miniature travelling doll arrangement.

I took pictures of Cedar, Amelle and my #62, Stella together. I think some of these turned out nicely.

Thanks for letting me play with your dolls, guys!

Amelle

Amelle and Stella

Cedar and Amelle

Cedar

Amelle

Cedar

Cedar

Amelle

Cedar

Cedar and Amelle

Amelle

Amelle and Stella

Amelle, Stella and Cedar

Stella

Cedar

Amelle

Cedar

I hope you enjoyed the pictures! 

It's much more fun to go out and take doll pictures than it is to mope around my empty house.

I took pictures of Ruby the first year I went to MCM and JLY 59 the second year.
This is a fun tradition for me.

Secret Snarker Gift 2018

I got my Secret Snarker gift from the American Girl Collectors Swap from Thyme.
My gift came all the way from the United Kingdom!
I am so excited and I love everything. I have LOTS of pictures.
Side note: I tried really hard to get the best pictures I could, but I have room to improve. It's just so dark this time of year.

Here are Anne, Kanani and Melody waiting impatiently to open the box

Here is the box itself! everything is so nicely packaged and each package is labelled with a doll's name! I am ashamed that I did not do this in my package for agate13.

Secret Snarker 2018 Part Three

I decided to make another skirt for agate13's Kanani.

This is a blue skirt (Ravenclaw colors!) with a Golden Snitch appliqued on it.

I got this idea directly from Pieces by Polly.

I just wanted to make a basic skirt pattern, so I used Simplicity 1244 by the Dollies' Dressmaker.

It appears that this pattern is now retired. I better be careful not to lose any of those tiny pattern pieces!

I appliqued on a Golden Snitch, using a pattern from Pieces by Polly, and adding stitching to look like the Snitch's flight pattern.

The result looks a bit like a 1950s Poodle Skirt.

What I had in mind was a skirt that Kanani could wear to a Quidditch match to show support for her team.

Anyway, it's definitely a unique addition to Kanani's wardrobe!

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You can see what I made for Secret Snarker in 2016 and in 2017 in older blog posts.

Secret Snarker 2018 Part Two

Making doll quilts is something that I really enjoy, and it's not something that everyone knows how to do.

So, I like to make a doll quilt as well as an outfit for my swap partner.

I made a Ravenclaw quilt for agate13's Kanani. I used the Ravenclaw colors from the book, not the movie, which are blue and gold.

It is an Irish chain quilt with an appliqued Snitch. The Irish chain is a nod to agate13's Kanani’s half-Irish origins.

Also, it's a quilt that is easy to make in miniature and still looks great!

I did the quilting on the quilt to look like the Snitch’s flight path.

The back of the quilt is perfect for a Hogwarts quilt- it shows star constellations and it glows in the dark.

I was so excited when I found this fabric in my stash! Even the colors were perfect for this quilt.

I don’t know if Kanani comes from a Muggle family or a family of witches. The story I told in my head is that her grandma is an Irish witch and made the quilt for her to take to Hogwarts, and bewitched it so the Snitch can fly around the surface of the quilt.  

I was inspired to make this quilt in part by the Ravenclaw quilt made by Pieces by Polly, but then I went off and did my own thing. Our quilts are very different and unique.

Here is a bonus picture of Jess with the quilt!

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You can see part one of this year's swap here.

You can see what I made for Secret Snarker in 2016 and in 2017 in older blog posts.

Secret Snarker 2018 Part One

I always look forward to Secret Snarker each year. It really sparks my creativity to design a gift for someone else's doll.

This year I was very excited, because I was assigned agate13. She wanted gifts for her Kanani, who attends Hogwarts and is a member of Ravenclaw.

I love Harry Potter, but had not used this as inspiration to sew doll clothes before.

It was pretty obvious and straightforward to make a doll-sized Ravenclaw uniform.

I used the pattern from Read Creations to make a Hogwarts robe. This pattern is free, which I greatly appreciated!

I did need to read the directions for the robe at times, but it was pretty straightforward to make.

I made the robe lined in blue for Ravenclaw, of course.

I used the Luna Lovegood uniform made by Kate Lauren Designs as inspiration. It's not so easy to get a good look at the Ravenclaw uniforms, as they are not always front and center in the movie.
I really appreciated having this as a resource.

I used the Button Up Shirt pattern by Liberty Jane.
I thought that the sleeves were more detailed than I needed. I really just wanted a basic pattern, since I had so many pieces to sew. There are days when I appreciate detailed patterns, and days when I just want to sew as basic a wardrobe staple as possible.

Also, the collar was 7/8 of an inch too short. I had to draft a new collar piece to get it to work.
So yeah, this was not my favorite pattern.

For the gray pleated skirt, I used Forever 18 Inches Timeless Schoolgirl Skirt. I was inspired by the Luna Lovegood uniform made by Kate Lauren Designs to use this rather than a more classic pleated skirt.

There are plenty of the other kind of grey pleated skirts out there, and this one was worn by Luna, so that makes it special.

I did not follow the directions to make the skirt. I thought it made sense to hem the bottom of the skirt before I pleated it, so I did.

So, there is a classic Harry Potter uniform! Kanani should be pleased.

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You can view Part two of the swap here.

You can see what I made for Secret Snarker in 2016 and in 2017 in older blog posts.

Quilt-a-long completed!

I started working on the quilt-a-long from American Girl Collectors over two years ago. I am pleased to share that I finally finished the quilts!

I made two of each block so that I would have two quilts at the end.

For most of the blocks, I reversed the colors on the patterns, or at least switched them around.

It was fun to see how different the blocks looked, even with the same fabric, by changing the colors to different positions.

As you can see, I also reversed the colors on the borders.

I also used different block layouts for each quilt, just to shake things up some more.

I also learned a lot about precision in making these quilt blocks. This is always important in quilting, but more so when you are using such tiny pieces!

This was a great project and I am so happy to finally have finished the quilts. I was so afraid I would lose the pieces!

Mini Quilt-A-Long

I finally made blocks nineteen and twenty for the mini quilt quilt-a-long that I started two and a half years ago.

Yay for finishing up on UFOs! (that's unfinished objects for you non-quilters.

The blocks are Sawtooth Star and Dutchman's Puzzle.

The blue and green fabrics turned out to be darker than I expected compared to the other fabrics I used in this project, but oh well.
Variety is the spice of life.

I have now finished the quilt tops and hope to have pictures of the finished quilts to post soon!

MCM Meet Up!

After I left MCM, I met up with two more doll friends from the Internet. After meeting Neth for the first time, that makes three of my Internet friends that I got to see!

I met up with two members of American Girl Collectors, Elewys and Marycontraria.

We had a good time talking.

Well, I did get lost on foot at one point, but they came and rescued me! Yay for friends with a better sense of direction than me!

If it hadn't been for cell phones, they might have never seen me again. Yay for modern technology!

Here is Anne hanging out with Marycontraria's dolls.

Frances is the Kaya doll, Nora is the cute custom doll with short brown hair, and the Camille doll is Nora's younger sister.

They look like they are having as much fun as I did!

MCM Sale 2017

Today, as you may be aware, was the Madison Children's Museum Benefit sale! And that means dolls!

I was very lucky to get to go.

Pussy Hats Encore

I am posting these pictures with permission from diagonalta at American Girl Collectors.

She made this very creative photo story with pussy hats that I made, and I love it!
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Thanks to IGSBeth, some of my girls have pussy hats now too! Melody is leading the march!

But wow, who knew sweet little Melody could fight like that. She got Saige on the floor to get her hat for herself, and the whole time Melody was yelling, "I'm the Civil Rights girl, I get the pussy hat!" Wow! 

And then was all sweetness and light as soon as she got the hat.

After that, no one argued when Melody wanted to be the leader.

Saige is pretty unhappy I never found the OG Under the Weather set though. She could really use some dolly aspirin and an ice pack right about now.

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Isn't that hilarious? Thanks for sharing, diagonalta!

Secret Snarker 2017 Part Three

I got my Secret Snarker gift! My gift giver was BeauCouer.

Her Diana is one of the best dressed 60s girls around, so my Melody was especially happy to get a gift from her!

I got Melody' accessories, Melody's mystery, and the Our Generation Believe in Pink retro accessory set!

I don't often get the accessory sets that go with the meet outfits. (I still want an official AG coral necklace for Felicity, though).

Melody's is a super special set, though, and I knew that I needed it.