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I picked up a pencil because I had something to say

This is a preliminary outline for a self portrait I’ve have been planning in my head since I don’t know how many months ago. It looks more elegant in person. The distortion in this photo of it makes it look a bit compressed and uncomfortable, but you get a rough idea of it. I’ll draw out a background design on an overlay, and then trace it onto one outline to be transferred.

I went to brunch at the NC Museum of Art this weekend, and wandered around for a while. I was still getting over a cold, and was feeling rundown, and later light-headed, which might or might not explain this weird sensation I had that the paintings were communicating with me, especially the portraits. No, I don’t mean I heard voices or anything like that. Perhaps it was just that I was uncomfortable, but it struck me that I felt a kinship with them.

It occurred to me that painting is a language that people who sensitively observe things use to communicate with other people who sensitively observe things, about what they see and experience. Later, I realized it wasn’t the people in the portraits, or the paintings themselves, I felt a kinship toward…It was the artists who painted them. I remembered Oscar Wilde had a good quote about all portraits being self-portraits. It’s from The Picture of Dorian Gray: “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

I keep thinking that painting is the answer to my feeling better in general. It seems very important. I’ve been doing all these things to feel better, watching my diet, exercising, trying to keep a decent sleeping schedule, but I need to do this too, just as much as I need to do those other things.

On the way home from the museum, at a used book store, I found and purchased this very nice book on Gustav Klimt, one of my favorite painters, one who always inspires me. It’s called Gustav Klimt Modernism in the Making. It was a good find.

I’m particularly drawn to this Portrait of Eugenia Primavesi, above. I left my book opened to this page for a couple of days, while I thought about how I wanted to do my own self portrait. I did a series of Klimt-inspired self portraits back in college, and I’ve been wanting to explore that again.

I bought a 12 x 16 piece of Claybord Textured, also known as Aquabord, so I could use both watercolor and acrylic paint together. I really prefer watercolor for painting faces and skin tones.

I also picked up a new journal, which oddly enough, has a lot of the same colors as the portrait I like. I think my own self portrait will be blue, blue-green, and lavender. I think I will have to try yellow at some point. First, I need to get my feet wet. Or my brushes wet, I guess.

Oh, a cool thing for today…one of my videos reached 1001 views! I don’t think I will try to paint my self portrait while filming myself though. One self portrait at a time is enough!

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Doll dress in progress, cutting out the pieces

I selected a red plaid, a black-on-black print, a gold-on-gold print, and an off-white cotton sateen for my doll dress. I knew I’d be adding some decorative stitching, and so I stayed modest in my print selection, choosing nothing too busy-looking. I didn’t have a piece of red plaid wide enough for my skirt, and so I had to piece it. I divided my pattern in half for the front panel, and in quarters for the two back panels, adding 1/4 inch seam allowances.

Matching a plaid is a bit tricky. I find the easiest way to do it is to center my front panel on the plaid, cut it out, and then fold under my side seam allowances. Then I place the front panel on another section of plaid, right sides up, and move it around until the pattern is aligned. Being careful to note where the seam line is, I gently flip the fabric over, right sides together, and pin along the seam line. I then hand baste along the seam line, open it up to double check I have it in the right place, and then I sew it by machine. I also find it is easiest to choose a line in the plaid design to use as a guide for each seam line and cutting line, whenever possible.

Instead of trying to machine stitch a decorative stitch directly on these tiny dress pieces, I cut my fabric out in a larger-than-necessary size first, a square or a rectangle, and did my decorative work on those. I did this for my decorative stitches and for the two pin tucks I made in the front of my bodice. I made see-through plastic templates from a plastic quilter’s template sheet for the pattern pieces that needed decorative work, and marked my seam lines with a permanent marker on the plastic. Then, after I did my decorative stitching and my pin tucks, I positioned my templates over my work, until I liked their placement, and then drew around them with a marking pencil. Then I cut out my fabric in the final dress pattern shape.

I got to try out my mirror stitch function on my new sewing machine too. On the vest, I flipped my leaf design so the two sides of the vest would mirror each other. Pretty cool. I used tear-away stabilizer under my fabric and Fusi-Knit interfacing, where necessary, for the decorative stitching to avoid puckering. I used rayon thread on top for the decorative stitching, with regular cotton sewing thread in my bobbin.

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Adapting a doll dress pattern

Now that I’ve got my doll dress muslin done, I can use the pieces from my own, custom dress and add elements from other patterns, adjusting them to fit, according to my dress muslin. You can see in the photo above, that I’ve taken the pieces from my dress muslin, and traced them to make pattern pieces on paper. Once I have my own basic pattern pieces in the right sizes and shapes, I can take pattern pieces for additional elements, like sleeves, vests, and aprons, such as those from commercial patterns, and adapt them to fit my own pattern pieces. This is something you can do with clothing patterns for people as well.

In this case, I’m using my own bodice and skirt pattern pieces, and I am adding sleeves, a vest, and an apron from an adorable Brown House Doll pattern. Be sure to check out Bev Brown’s designs if you like to sew clothing for dolls. They are super. I adapted my bodice and skirt from doll dresses Max came up with before.

Here, I’ve redrafted the BHD pieces to fit my dress. I do this by tracing the elements I want to adapt, and laying the tracings over my pattern pieces. Then I can redraw the lines to fit my pattern pieces. The top of the sleeve needed to be redrawn to fit the armhole of my pattern. The vest had to be completely redrawn according to the lines I marked on my bodice for my neckline, armholes, and waistline. The apron should work as it is, but I will be adding a row of machine-embroidered fabric on the lower edge, which means I may need to widen the sides of the apron to compensate for the amount I will need to turn under on the raw edges.

Making another muslin at this point is not a bad idea, but, instead I will leave my seam allowances a little wide, in case I need to adjust them. I made some changes to my bodice that I haven’t retested. Next comes fabric selection.