For the pants I’m trying to make I am going to use a stretch faux leather fabric. Making the pattern took a bit more work than I expected and I had a little time to spare yesterday.
So I though I’d go for something simple and test out the fabric. A bathing suit should be simple enough right? Right?
Well, not really. The pattern was easy enough, I made that the day before. Since it’s only two parts I figured it’d wouldn’t take much more time than sowing a t-shirt. As it turned out I was about 1,5 hours off the mark.
Drawing the pattern was quite easy and translated to the doll quite well. There are some structural issues. For example there is nothing to keep the top two straps together, resulting in a sloppy look. The straps could have been much slimmer too, 7mm instead of 10 would look much better I think.
The same issue goes for the bottom part. There is no structure to tighten the fabric against her bum.
But the biggest flaw was that I didn’t take into account the stretch of the fabric. The first fitting was very loose and not like a bathing suit at all. That was quite easy to fix. I turned it inside out again, drew a new 1 cm seam allowance, sew it together and cut off the excess. Now it’s much better.
Though not something you’d wear to the beach. Well, Noa wouldn’t wear to the beach. To be honest I would never take my BJDs to the beach. When I see the Smardoll photography I do see the fun, but that’s a bit (way) out of my comfort zone.
This project wasn’t completely worthless though. I learned to use the fabric, how it handles under the sewing machine for example. As well as a thing or two about drawing up skintight patterns.
Instead of measuring and drawing out the pattern you can make a mould pattern. Cover the doll in ceran wrap, make a shell out of painters tape and draw on the seams. And I’ve tried that, but I don’t think I learn enough about construction that way.
Technically there is a difficulty in hiding the hems in such a tight flexible fabric. I’m thinking the next time to add a liner to hide the seams inside the piece.
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