Because if you're not sewing detailed Halloween costumes for American Girl dolls, are you even a perimenopausal empty nester?
Actually... can I still say that I'm an empty nester when I have my college graduate living at home? Does it even count as living at home when she spends all her time either outside the house making pizzas for below a living wage or in her room applying to every job available for early career scientists?
And while I'm on the subject, what's with every job available for early career scientists actually requiring 1-3 years of professional experience? I get that three years is still "early" in one's career, but there really ought to be something in the world that a brand-new college graduate can do other than Americorps, which, I might add, also does not pay a living wage!
So, maybe I'm light on the empty nest these days, but I am VERY heavy on the perimenopause, as my active and palpable continuous rage informs me, and for some reason there is nothing that calms my perimenopausal rage like sewing doll clothes, so leave me alone and let me have my peace.
This American Girl doll skeleton costume is a basic long-sleeved T-shirt and full-length leggings, but before I finished each garment I appliqued onto it the skeleton bones that Mr. Craft Knife designed for me. The bones are cut with my Cricut from white jersey knit (upcycled from an old T-shirt) fused with Heat n' Bond, and I ironed the bones to the garments and then messily top-stitched them down with a free-motion quilting foot:
I took a couple of tries at this costume, and my second version was nice enough that I felt okay sending it to my niece, but I think what I really need to do is give up on my dream of fabric applique and buy some heat-transfer vinyl for the bones.
I LOVE fabric applique, but the heat-transfer vinyl that I used for this Jack-o-lantern T-shirt made the finished garment look soooo nice and tidy!
Mr. Craft Knife also drew this cutesy Jack-o-lantern face--he made a spooky one, too, but I only had enough orange T-shirt on hand to sew one doll shirt, and the cutesy face won!
This is my first time trying heat-transfer vinyl and I nailed it on the first try, which means that the next five times I use it something will go terribly wrong for reasons that I will not be able to determine.
The Sweet Valentine Dress from Doll Fashion Studio is tied with the skeleton costume as my favorite of these Halloween outfits:
I bought this cartoon Haunted Mansion fabric as a remnant once upon a time (I miss you, Joann!!!) with no plans other than to enjoy how cute it is, and happily, it also turned out to be just enough fabric for this dress for my niece, who LOVES herself some Disneyland!
I love how simple and classic this dress design is, though, so... yeah, I already have two more dresses cut out and waiting on my sewing room table.
And of course, it's not a complete set of Halloween outfits without a witch costume!
The cape is the fleece cape from Bombshell Bling. Sewing the stretchy velvet to woven quilting cotton wasn't the most fun, but I got it figured out and I'm pretty happy with it. The hat is a paid pattern from Pixie Faire, but I hesitate to recommend it because I had to alter it quite a lot to get the cone and brim to match. The geometry just wasn't geometry-ing!
While I was finishing up these outfits, I also whipped up a big doll mask order from my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, and so I decided to multi-task refreshing some of those stale listing photos while I photographed these outfits.
And that's why some of my doll mask photos are now a little bit Halloweeny!
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Oops, I missed a couple of threads! Oh, well--that's how my customer knows it's truly handmade, I guess.
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Fun fact: etsy recently updated some of its policies to ban AI slop, but it's doing it by WAY overshooting what's actually necessary, to the extent that shops will now be required to include one completely unedited photo in every listing.
Like... what?
If I had to include one completely unedited photo in this blog post, here's what that would look like, lol!
At least in my case, the editing is what makes the photo accurately represent my product!
Ugh, whatever. It's not like life isn't already just an endless succession of nonsensical hoops to jump through, anyway.
Oof, that sounded mean and depressed--must be time to soothe my perimenopausal rage by sewing those doll dresses I cut out earlier. Orrrrrr I could go to the gym and yell at the college boy trying to hog the leg press. Doesn't even matter which one, because there's always someone!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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