Sewing adventures: Monster High; Sleeping bags and cloaks

This past weekend, I had a chance to sew! No… it wasn’t that ruffled shirt, it was a few items for my daughter.

On Saturday,I purchased Elissabat, her new Monster High doll. I decided to gift her doll with a few things. This quarter, just like every other quarter at school. She’s done very well in school, 10 A’s and 2 B’s. She made honor roll. I don’t always reward her with gifts for doing well. She’s expected to do her best, but I get her something this time.

First, I made a sleeping bag that was completely lined. I wasn’t planning on adding a zipper, but my daughter asked me if I would.

Take a closer look at the fabric. It’s the same fabric that I wove on my 32″ Kromski Harp back in January 2014!

After the sleeping bag, I started working on a cloak. This work in progress cloak is being made from silk scraps. 

In haute couture, you’ll see reference to lightly wetting fabric so that it can easily be manipulated into a desired shape. I decided to create a small cloak for one of my daughter’s dolls where I could manipulate the fabric.

Since I didn’t have enough fabric to properly match the pattern shown in the above picture, I’ll be adding narrow strips of the gold fabric to act as a color block for the side panels of this cloak. Look closely at the two side seams and you’ll see what I mean. The pattern doesn’t line properly. That’s one of the downsides of working with patterned scraps. 😉 I had to be careful as I shrunk some of the fabric.

A draw string will be added to the hood, so it can be tied around the body. The draw string will will be either crocheted or a knitted i-cord.

There’s still much more to be done with this, but I’m having a lot of fun. I played around with shrinking and stretching fabric into the different shapes. This can’t be done with all fabrics but I’ve I found wool to be the easiest fabric to manipulate.

Embroidery will be added to the gold side, and some small glass seed beads will be added to the hood. The hem will be manually blind hem stitched into place, so regardless of the side you won’t be able to see the hem.

 My daughter didn’t help with the sewing, she was much too busy creating a doll house out of cardboard.  Some of her inspiration for the dollhouse comes from My Froggy Stuff. I know she’ll be posting pictures on her website.