Man's collared shirt, tie

I've been working on a shirt for the Doll Leaves body (and btw, the head is ON THE WAY. So excited).

I want this shirt to work with a suit: vest, coat, tie, and pants. So the best pattern is one that includes a collar band/stand. The stand provides a place for the tie to go around and then the collar lies nicely over the tie.

I tried this shirt first in a lightweight quilting cotton: too bulky and that bulk made the cuffs and collar stand nearly impossibly thick for buttonholes.

This version is in a very fine and light pima cotton batiste: perfect for this application.

Yes it is pink. Get over it and admire this vintage Arrow shirt advertisement with PASTELS.

I did not interface any part of the shirt, although I might try judicious amounts of cotton organdy next time.

If you look closely at the neck, you can see that the collar stand sticks out farther than the shirt front on one side.

This is due to the difficulties of getting my fingers, the shirt, some pins, and the sewing machine foot all in there are once. The end you can't see, of course, is perfect.
I hate to hand baste, but I might have to if I want this shirt to work.
I did make the band just a little bit wider (taller) then it was originally, and it might look a bit odd, but it was much easier to sew, but still not problem free. So I might regress to the original height. Still pondering.

I'm also not happy with the placement of my buttons on the front. I would have liked one less button on the front (to the same length, so wider spacing), and to have started the top (non stand) button just a bit farther down. Not to mention my buttons are all higgledy-piggledy facing every which way. Bleah.

I've narrowed the sleeves and raised the armscye (armhole) quite a bit since the modern shirt pattern I based this doll version on was quite sloppy loose and it was rather awkward under the close fitting vest.

The sleeves are better now, but I'm wondering if I need to make the shoulders just a tiny bit narrower.

I kept the plackets on the sleeves although it added considerable to the time involved.

This means that sewing the cuffs on was another "exciting" adventure, since the placket is NOT on the seam, so the cuffs are put on after the sleeve is sewn. More hand basting in my future. ARRRRGH.

The plackets seem rather long, but that is necessary since this Doll Leaves doll has lovely large manly hands. And check out the crooked button! ARRRGH.

The back pleat is proportional to the original pattern but it looks too narrow to me.  And from the back, it is clear that my collar stand IS too tall.

  

The pants are a work in progress: this version is too snug in the butt and thighs, making the pockets and fly pull unattractively. Mark III pants will be the next post, I think.

I scaled down a tie pattern for this: I kept the three part construction, although I will not keep that for the future since the seams make it difficult to roll the tie at the narrowest spot.

The last tie I made (blue winter print)

 

came out unexpectedly long, so I used a Windsor knot on it. The red version is 1/4" shorter, and I used a Pratt, which is not symmetric. I will put the missing 1/4" back and stick to the Windsor knot.

Vintage French-back boxers

A proper sized head is on the way for my SD male body, so I got inspired to pick up the boxer pattern again.

I bought a rather beat-up but intact 1945 Simplicity sewing pattern for boxers. After scaling it down, then up, then down, then finally arriving at a reasonable draft, I set out to make a pair "for real".

I had intended to list this pair on my Etsy store (The Educated Flea: see side bar) but this is a time-consuming pattern. Like, 2 hours for cutting and assembly, not including buttonholes and buttons! So I would have to charge between 20 and 30 dollars just from the time involved. And I think that is a bit steep for a pair of doll underpants.

But they are COOL

I do have some problems still to solve with the pattern: It is not left/right symmetrical. You can see this a little bit in the photo. The left and right waistband are not the same length (this is supposed to happen): the difference is made up by cutting off the left hand side of the waistband. Somehow, in combination with my 1/4" seam allowance, means that the right side of the boxers is too long. So I suppose the way to solve this next time is to NOT cut off the left hand side short.

I also had to change the order of sewing quite a bit to get the boxers assembled without a lot of swearing.

I used pima cotton batiste and 1/4" buttons for this. If the pattern draft had been any smaller, the buttonholes would never have fit. As it is, I had to pick out and re-do two buttonholes.

You can see in the front picture that the buttons are very close together. I really like the three-button front, but I might change subsequent versions to 2 buttons. The buttons are right next to each other, adding to the difficulty already built into such small buttons.

 

The back should have had two button holes in each side of the waist band back extensions, but there is just not room at this scale for two. These buttonholes were made with the automatic buttonholer for my Singer Featherweight. They are 5/16", the smallest cam I have.

The next version will be in striped fabric, like the version on the original pattern's cover.

A meetup

Today, I went to my third or fourth doll meetup. As usual, I had a great time, learned a lot, and may have fixed a few more names in my head.

The meetups I have been to here in the Sacramento area have all been hosted at private homes, although in the past some have been in parks or in other public venues.

Imagine a kitchen table, covered in doll parts, pastels, colored pencils, tools, surrounded by women working on dolls: painting gorgeous tattoos, piercing ears and noses, body blushing, and anything you can imagine.

In the living room, another crowd, flopped on the couch and the floor, some working on dolls but some just watching a movie.

Every once in a while, the conversation swells from a dull roar to a louder roar punctuated by ear-piercing shrieks of laughter.

Outside people are spraying clear coat either before or after adding color, and some are dremmeling and sanding.

I had sprayed two of my dolls (the headless Doll Leaves male and my treasured Impldoll) before I left for the meet. I managed to blush the Doll Leaves, but my attempt at coating the Impldoll was not very even so I will save her for another day.

I also got the assembly of a fur coat for my Etsy shop (fake fur, of course) done. Several people expressed some interest in the clothing I have for sale but I made no sales. However, folks did get a chance to see the quality of work I do and I have hope for future sales.

Where did the time go?

I've been busy making clothes for my Etsy shop. I find that if I set any kind of a deadline, I get myself all wound up in angst. So no deadlines. And I decided I needed to take a break from sewing sewing sewing and did the tattoos on my little tiny Doll Leaves.

It is not the best job in the world - I had trouble evenly applying the MSC and there are random bits of watercolor pencil crumbs and smudges in various places because I'm a slob. But anyway....

... here you go...

Don't piss off the brownie

because she'll come down off her perch

 and ...

watch out!

Two down, uncounted to go

I've been a busy little beaver up here in the sewing room, pounding out garments for my Etsy store.

Finished what I like to call the "Polka-stripe" dress the other day, and a really nice pima cotton batiste blouse.

I finally wised up and put the zipper in first, so if I screwed it up I would be only out a handful of minutes' work. I did good. It was easy to match the stripes in the skirt, and I decided to pleat on the stripes for the puffed sleeves. Due to no planning on my part, the pleats were perfectly spaced for the sleeve pleats.

This is the same pattern as the blue and white gingham ruffled dress I posted about earlier.

The blouse caused me to sweat a little, although it did only take me 3 1/2 hours, about what a human-sized blouse would take me, so I guess that's OK. The cotton was a delight to work with, and I have more in white and light blue to play with. It cries out for rows and rows of pintucking.

And, I finally caught on to 3/8 being larger than 5/8 and set up my Singer automatic buttonholer to make the buttonholes. Yes, those buttons really really work.
Hancock Fabrics carry Slimline buttons, 6 to a card. On sale the other day for 60 cents. These are 1/4", the smallest buttons I'm willing to try and do and undo. 
 
The blouse-sweat came from the darn vintage collar construction. I cut a white blouse out at the same time, so I might change the order of operations just a bit for the next try. AND, by cutting two blouses out in 1/2 hour, I saved 1/2 hour of time! Sweet!

Etsy has a suggested formula for figuring the asking price for an item: material (ALL, including packing materials) + profit + labor. Then you double the resulting wholesale number for retail. There might have been something like overhead in there. 
Anyway, my material cost is quite low, and I've had to set my labor quite low, or the garments would be seriously overpriced. 

Well, enough whinging.

I have a couple of improvised photo floods, and today I kluged together some barn doors out of disposable pie pans and also a diffuser out of kitchen parchment paper to help direct the light where I want it and make it a little less edgy.

I played around with a backlight to show off the batiste. 

The doll's face was quite dark with the backlight, so I deployed the barn-door/diffuser thing and all was well. I still had to lighten up everything in the GIMP, since it is raining like mad today and my lights are 75w equivalent daylight fluorescent bulbs.

I stuck the Nikon on a tripod, framed the photo I wanted, and started waving the big light around over my head while clicking the camera. I'm sure the termite inspector person thought I was absolutely off my head. (No termites, by the way.)
I picked the version I liked best.

The Black Coat

I finally finished a black corduroy coat for my Etsy shop: The Educated Flea

Everything takes longer than I want it to, but I think this came out great so it was worth the wait. This is the same pattern as the pink wool one that I put shoulder pads in (Hello Dolly Boutique pattern).

I decided to skip the pads since I want this coat to fit a variety of dolls, and the shoulder pads do take up a little room.

Speaking of fitting dolls, I need to take some of my Etsy things, or duplicates of them, to doll meets so I can ask folks to try them on their SD dolls. It would be nice to list a range of dolls the garments fit.

Anyway, black is hard to work on in anything but good, strong, natural daylight. So the short winter days limit my sewing hours. I'm glad I finished sewing it before it started raining buckets, although I did manage to photograph during a rainy day. I am using 75w equivalent daylight florescent lightbulbs in cheap heat lamp reflectors from the home improvement store.

The color temp is ok but the light is not very bright. However, it is bright enough to make for dramatic shadows. I suppose dramatic shadows will have to be a "feature" from now on.

More photos of the coat.

Pockets!

Added a half-belt to give the coat a more defined waist.

The blown-out highlights illustrate my photographic ineptitude.

Daft me set the lining in by hand. I actually enjoy that part of the process!

Starting an Etsy shop

Well, this is quite an adventure. My husband is tired of hearing about it so you will have to listen instead.

Etsy, for those few of you who do not know about it, is an internet site where resellers and crafty-types can sell their stuff.

Finding the Answers to my Questions
If you superficially scan Etsy, you find there are four easy steps to starting a store.
Ha.
I suppose they do not want to scare folks off. It is more complicated than that.

Figure out what you want to call your store. Spend hours trying names that some person has already laid claim to. Finally settle on "The Educated Flea." I'll explain that later.

Decide to use Paypal. Find out that you have to alter your existing, personal, account to one of Paypal's business types.

Wonder about shipping costs and sales tax. Decide to worry about that later.

Cruise other people's Etsy shops and borrow some of their policies for returns and so on.
Wonder if that's really what you want to do.

Sales tax. I'll think about that tomorrow.

Realize that, in your county, you have to get a business license. Head to the county seat and find out that they now charge for Doing Business As and that's nearly the same cost as the darn license.  And I'll have to publish in the paper.

Poke around on the Board of Equalization's web site and decide to worry about sales tax later.

The process of setting up a shop generates a lot of questions. Finding the answers is not straightforward. But I think I've gotten it all worked out.

Oops. Taxes.

Sales Taxes and the Great State of California
I think I am supposed to collect 7.25% tax for any sale I make that is shipped to California. How I'm supposed to set that up in my store, I have no idea.

Trolling the 'help' forums, I find that I cannot do that until I've opened my shop. Sigh.

I start the process to get a Seller's Permit, necessary to collect sales tax.

Shipping and So On
While wandering dazedly through reams of tax law, I suddenly wonder how shipping fits into that. (you can't do shipping until you've listed an item, but you can list an item before you open your store).

CA says that (and don't believe me, go look it up for yourself or pay an expert) if I use a common carrier to deliver my package, and the shipping cost is called out clearly on the invoice, and I charge exactly the shipping cost, I don't collect sales tax on the shipping.

Getting Up the Nerve
In order to list an item, I have to have an item to list. So I sit down and bust out a cute doll hat. Then I try to take pictures. I need lights. So I go to Home Depot and get some daylight florescent bulbs and a couple of clamp on light reflectors. 

How much to charge for the hat? No clue, so I cruise Etsy and try to figure out other people's pricing. I think they throw darts at a board and stop when their arm gets tired.

OMG I have to write copy.

AND figure out the shipping. So I head out to the office supply store to look for little boxes. After checking out the Post Awful's website and trying to guess how much it costs to ship something. I guess I'll have to calculate domestic shipping for each item by packing it up and weighing it before listing, then wondering how a second item might affect that, then taking a flying guess for Canada, Mexico and Everywhere Else.

Trying to Look Professional
I've ordered business cards and created a site banner and even ordered clothing labels. Yes, it seems overboard, but I'd like to come across not like a middle aged broad stuck in a home sewing room. Oh wait, that's what I am.

Why a Flea goes to School
I like vintage stuff, and Cole Porter songs. And I've got a Masters degree that does me no good (Education). And I hop from task to task and from enthusiasm to enthusiasm (flea).
"Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it
Let's fall in love." 

Thank you, Mr. Porter.