Dolls

Dolls

Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Benny Project Continues!

There is nothing better to do on a snow day than stay inside. It snowed all day Friday then yesterday and today it's been in the negative temperatures. Like, -13. Brr! So in between playing some video games, I got a chance to work on the Benny project!

With my sewing machine in good working order and watching the youtube videos again about how to attach a sleeve, I was ready.

And this is all done by trial and error. I'm not very fluent with sewing so I'm going at this blind. No notches to line up the patterns, no dots to know where my stitching begins and ends. I don't want to jinx myself but I do have to say that I've been pretty good at making sure my projects don't turn into a Pinstrosity so I'm very pleased with how this has come together so far!

I started by sewing the left front and left back together to form the hole for the sleeve.


Then I took the sleeve and doing exactly what the video said, I sewed a stitch and gathered it so it would fit in the sleeve hole. Then I sewed the sleeve down the side and turned it right side out.


With the sleeve right side out and the body right side in, I put the sleeve through the hole.


Now (obviously) this sleeve hole is not going to fit around the end of your sewing machine so it's stitching by hand.


Lots of teeny tiny stitches.


I also had to make sure that my gathering stitch on the sleeve was in my seam allowance so I had to keep adjusting. I didn't use pins, might have helped if I did!

After turning the body right side out, attaching the sleeve was a success!


Unfortunately I got a little pucker in the sleeve but it's easy to rip that out and re-stitch.


Model? Can you please come forward to try this on?


Hey, not bad! If I get the sleeve a little shorter it will be the perfect length to add a cuff.


This was my trial run but I'm pleased with how well it turned out. I just need to make the side seam a little bigger so the shoulder seam will be where it's supposed to be. I don't think I did too bad for just eye-balling it. I have lots of this fabric so I can make another pattern if I choose. Or maybe I'll just use the same ones! (That might be easier actually.)

Until the next update!

2 comments:

Andrea said...

Not bad at all for a first try, especially since your pattern doesn't have any markings to guide the sewing.

That Video is great for human sized sleeves. For doll sized sleeves, I prefer to sew the shoulder seams and then sew in the flat sleeve, before I close the sleeve's under arm seam and the side seam of the jacket in one go. For me this works much easier.

Forestminuet said...

Oh, that's a good idea! I think I will try that when I do the other part of this jacket. Thanks Andrea!