I like crafting :]

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My first AF doll is done! This is Lucinda_Artistry's character Button Earthenware!

You can see my attack here.

Here's her bingo card!!! FIRST DOLL WAS A BINGO!!!!!

A New Hero joins the gang!

Who's that? It's Coda! He's @electricxmayhem 's OC from our Masks game! He's fun, he's super, and he's got a lot of accessories.

Honestly, this doll took me far too long. The design went through so many iterations- he looks almost nothing like his concept art. The hair alone took four separate tries (with full reroots for each AUGH!!). BUT I like the way he turned out. And it's always fun to get to experiment a lot with new ideas, patterns, and textures!! :)

HES DONE!!! MY BIG FLUFFY BABY IS DONEEEEE LOOK AT HIMMMM

Here is @simplyspider 's OC MeiMei from our Masks game! Even though she is the smartest person in town, she still has lots to learn at the library, but- what's that? Did someone say supervillain?!

At a moment's notice, she's ready for hero duty with her trusty robot sidekick Rotom! On the prowl gathering intel for her hero team.

All patterns for this doll were drafted by me! The body, shoes and cuffs are crocheted, her face was needle felted, and her clothes were sewn.

Total time: Approximately 21 hours. (approximately because I forgot to turn the stopwatch on a few times)

Starting time: 13 hours and 37 minutes

I am going to do something ambitious with this... I am going to sew a coat with a lining. You see, the white fabric I was going to use for the lab coat is thin and thus a little transparent, and if I sewed it like normal you would be able to see every bit of seam allowance, every stray thread, AND the clothes underneath. I said I wanted to be more experimental with my sewing and well... here we are. The lining will just be another layer of the same white fabric, which might be a blessing or a curse, depending on how easy it is to keep track of which pieces are supposed to be "inside" and which pieces are supposed to be outside. I also decided to do something dangerous this go around and USE MY SEWING MACHINE. Normally I hand-sew everything because the machine scares me, but the only way I'll be able to control the beast properly is if I practice with it. Sadly, I did have a mishap and sewed one of the sleeves on inside out and had to painstakingly rip out a bunch of stitches by hand to fix it, which took far longer than if I had hand sewed it. You win some, you lose some ig.

Now for pictures!

Here she is with the outside of the jacket pieces sewn together. I decided I was going to sandwich the collar in between the lining and the outside pieces instead of stitching it to both pieces at once. This decision may cause issues in the future. The fabric I am using for this coat is also from a reclaimed shirt! Which means besides the patch on her shirt, all her clothes have been made from old clothing! So that's kinda neat.

Two and a half hours in and disaster struck...

I finished the lining and started putting it together with the outer only to realize... I made two of the same pieces. *facepalm* One of them has to be mirrored for this to work. Normally this wouldn't matter, but because this jacket is asymmetrical, it matters! Now, I have to seam rip the entire lining because to fix this issue I have to START OVER and of course i used my sewing machine on the smallest stitch size so there's so many stitches to rip out and of course this fabric is delicate and I can't just go at it with the seam ripper the fast way without risking ripping it to shreds...

Current time: 19 hours and 2 minutes

Okay, I cheated and just remade the lining instead of seam-ripping the first attempt. The previous lining will go into my bag of half-finished/abandoned clothing pieces to be re-purposed at a later date. But after about 5 and a half hours of work + a wash and dry, the lab coat is done!

Accessories!

Current time: 21 hours and 8 minutes

I used my DK weight orange yarn with a 5.5mm hook to create some chunky bracelets. I painted some fabric scraps blue and silver and sewed those to the bracelets to act as little touch screens! I don't know if she'd use a screen on each wrist (I think you'd have to be ambidextrous to get full use of both) but I didn't want to leave one of them blank.

Next was making her little robot buddy Rotom! I crafted him with air-dry clay and armature wire and painted with acrylic paints. He's a little big for the scale, but I'm afraid of making things too small with clay and having them fall apart on me. I gave him two long wires that poke out from the base to act as a stand so he can "fly" and even perch on Mei's shoulder. I really need to get a dedicated workspace for my crafts... I sculpted him on my computer desk with the few inches of free space I had. (You can also see my sewing machine just off to the side, because it had previously occupied this exact space while I was working on the lab coat.)

Aaaand after waiting 24 hours for the clay to dry, and then painting him, he's done. Which means we're finally ready for photos!!!

Starting time: 4 hours 55 minutes

Now here comes the fun part! The character comes to life when I add the face and hair, but the personality really shows with the clothes. I love experimenting with different patterns, colors, and techniques. I'm really hoping to get more experimental with my art this year, particularly when it comes to clothing.

That said, the outfit for this girlie is pretty basic, but I'm still gonna try to have fun with a little flair.

The Concept Art

I based her outfit on references from Mei's player ( @simplyspider ) some conversations, and some personal ideas. Here's the concept art I drew up for her super hero fit and casual fit.

The superhero lab coat goes on top of the casual outfit, so I'll start with the casual clothes first.

The Pants

Current time: 7 hours 25 minutes Everett said "jeans" so that means I get to reuse some fabric! I have an old pair of jeans (at least 15 years old) that are too worn to wear anymore, so I've been slicing them up to use in projects. I made a pair of pants with them before, but now that I'm thinking about it, I should definitely use them to make overalls or a jean jacket. That'd be so cute. I also re-used an existing pant pattern piece (probably for my second Scary Marlowe doll), elongating it some because I want to roll the pant legs up to get a cute cuffed look (inspired by my short ex-coworker who always has to roll up her jeans. I figured since Mei is smol, she probably has to do the same). I also decided to try extra hard and embroider front pockets and a fly and sew on back pocket patches!

Some progress pics:

The finished product:

Now to wash them to get rid of the fabric pen markings!

Shirts!

Current time: 12 hours and 42 minutes Okay, so maybe I got a little side tracked. Maybe I decided to crochet a plant to put outside my apartment door and then realized that management would probably get mad if i punched any holes in the wall so now I have a big crochet plant I'm not sure where to put. and yeah, maybe i caved and bought Avowed and then played 20 hours of that in 3 days. But I'm still here making dolls because my hands can't stay idle for long and man does avowed have a lot of dialogue i gotta sit through.

So, basically, I made two shirts. The first idea was a college t-shirt, one with the college name on it and then a little design, but... well the little design didn't turn out very great. The design vs. what I got:

Yeah... The "Est. 1905" just looks like a weird blob of text. I'll put this shirt on the back burner to figure out later. While going through my available fabrics, I had an idea for a different shirt:

I cut up an old Starbucks t-shirt and then cut a piece out of some adorable gnome-inspired quilting fabric to create this little patch. My original idea was to try to embroider flowers onto the shirt, but this is way better. It has way more detail and its already so cute.

Shoes!

Current time: 13 hours and 37 minutes I drafted up a new pattern for sneakers based on my Mary Janes pattern for my doll Misty. They came out alright. Pretty simple, but it's hard to do anything too complex on this scale.

The Outfit

And here's everything all put together!

Total time for the outfit: 8 hours and 42 minutes.

Starting time: 2 hours and 43 minutes. After trying rug tufting for the first time, I'm back and working on the doll! I added a nose and did some blushing on the cheeks, nose, and ears. Was going to needle felt the face but I decided to pivot to the hair first. It will help guide the shape of the face.

One bun rooted

Current time: 3 hours and 36 minutes.

Second bun rooted

Current time: 4 hours and 4 minutes... kinda. I forgot to turn the timer back on a few times and got to work anyways so I think I'm missing like 20 minutes or so. Oops. Hopefully this doesn't become a habit. Second bun has been rooted and styled! Onto the bangs!

She has bangs!

Current Time: 4 hours 17 minutes. They're cute, but I might redo them later. It really depends on how they work with the face once that's done. Speaking of which!! I think I'll do that next 😳

Onto the face!

Current time: 4 hours and 55 minutes I tried to take a video of my needle felting, but it ended up just being a video of my hand. So instead, take this gif and imagine the little tufting sound of the needle compressing the wool, ok? I had a pair of round glasses already made for my previous doll (I ended up using square glasses instead), so I added those here! Normally I really struggle with the faces and it takes several tries, but this time I'm actually pretty happy with how this turned out. I may change her expression later (she's supposed to be very mean so I think "grumpy" may fit her better?) but I think her eyes look good!

Took me two minutes just to find the ends of the yarn lmao also i ran out of water but theres a cat sitting in my lap so i cant get more. i guess ill die ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The head is done!

Current time: 33 minutes I decided to make the head one row shorter than normal to really emphasize that she's smol :)

Torso done! Time for skeleton

Current time: 1 hour 15 min Couldnt get to my stitch markers (due to the aforementioned kitty in my lap) so I had to use the two spares in my bag of crochet hooks, meaning i finally got to use the mothman stitch marker I bought 6 years ago! spooky! i cant help but wonder what Mei thinks of mothman... if the legend of mothman even exists in Halycon-universe. I didn't decrease the number of stitches in her arms or torso from my base pattern, which may have been a mistake? only time will tell. I did make her shorter by a few rows tho.

She has limbs! And ears!

Current time: 2 hours 43 minutes. Cat left my lap so I refilled my water and moved to the couch for this bit. Super repetitive, but it's done! Still need to give her a nose, but I gotta run for the evening! Her snoot will have to wait!