Crafting Creatively: Picking Perfect Prints and Fabric

Kit's dress looks good because I started with good fabrics.¹

So there you are, doing your first AG sewing project! You've already decided to avoid the Generidress profile--or if you're working with it (because it's a great starter project), you're tweaking it to look like more than that. Maybe you bought a pattern or two from Etsy, or are doing a basic gathered skirt, or something. Either way, you're all ready to cut and sew and make something neat for your doll wardrobe. It's go time!

Wait, no it's not. Don't cut that fabric just yet. Let's make sure that your fabric fits what you're doing. Set the scissors down and listen, cause we can all learn a little something before we get into the cutting. Learn twice, cut once, cause you can't uncut fabric or trims.

There's a lot of good, cute fabrics out there, and a lot of good, cute clothing patterns. I own several patterns and like buying them from Etsy shops. But part of working with an American Girl doll and making clothes for them is working to scale. Like I said with my knitting post, messing up the scale, the print, or the add-ons and not trying to work within some limits for dolls can turn what might have been a nice outfit into a hot, oversized, terrible looking mess. And this is especially true with fabric. I got a lot of my mistakes out as a kid on other doll brands, but I also didn't have the internet to show these failings.² I fucked it up so you don't have to.

This doesn't just include the fabric, it includes the trims. Let's hop below the cut for the things to do, and things not to do.

AG Complaint Department: The Ten-Year Rise and Fall of the Best Friend Line

So long, girls. The Era ends with you.

Have you been living under a rock for a few months in the AG community? I haven't, even if I have no need to post something every day on this blog. This is not Tumblr¹ and I'm not a news blog cause I don't need to be. I've got stuff coming up that y'all will like--the gang is up to another girl--and tons of reviews and shit. But I'd like to address the end of the Best Friends line before the launch of BeForever at the end of this month, so that on occasion my articles can seem timely.

If you've had a pulse on the AG community for any time since about January to March, you'll have heard whispers of both Samantha's return and the retirement of Marie-Grace and Cécile. Many people saw the end coming through whispers, catalog scans that didn't include the others, and jabber from personal shoppers. Finally in May, AG officially stepped up and said that Marie-Grace, Ruthie, Ivy, and Cécile are going into the Archives. This is in preparation for the launch of BeForever--a rebranding of the Historical characters to focus on the main AG characters and appeal to girls again. This includes new clothes, the return of the emphasis on girls being the same in essence through history, using new ways to appeal to old ones--aw yiss, apps and nets--and rumors that include removing illustrations from the books to appeal to older children.² This does not include their best friends or the NOLA Girls. There's several articles that have been published on news sites and around discussing how this removes the only black character that hasn't been a slave and the only Asian-American character in the lineup. I'm not going to knock them in any way. They're right in saying that with Ivy getting booted, we don't have a Asian American character represented in history anymore--and that Cécile is the only well to do pretty princess we've had that was black. But neither girl really got a chance to hold down the fort herself, and the best Friends Line was a poor way to put both of them in. 

For the most part, the Best Friends Line did not do much for AG's bottom line or their appeal to the historical characters, and the one time it touched the moddies it tanked hard. While the Best Friend Line had its appearances of successes, it also had its problems--lots of them. I do kind of like the idea of best friends and two girls sharing an era, and a lot of my historicals have theirs. Edith has Dorothy, Kimmy has Tyanna, Addy has Sarah, and Felicity has pretty brunette Elizabeth. I'm even debating finally creating Charlotte's stepsister/close friend from Caroline.³ And the most technical sense, I have several of the Best Friends: Nellie, Cécile (though she's not a best friend, she's a split collection--more on that later), Kimmy ("Ivy"), and Sonali. A lot of people will talk about the good of the line. But I feel like the AG community and the purchasing population at large didn't really feel the Best Friends Line, and that it going down is going to overall be a good thing.

If you haven't clicked onto this, this is all my perception. I'm not a marketing mogul, I've never worked for AG in my life, and I majored in English. These are just my opinions as someone who came into AG at the small start of the Best Friends Line, and saw how things came--and now, how they're going, along with things one of the members of the forums has observed and I'm alright with passing along. You're not here for numbers. You're here for my opinions, education, snark, and to learn better about the kyriarchy and how to tear it down. 

Let's start the same way AG did: with Samantha and Nellie.

Clothes Review: Colonial Williamsburg Doll Dresses and Hats

Felicity and Elizabeth: gay as springtime.

So I'm heading to my yearly Texas Vacation, which means that the reviews I meant to get done all May will have to be put off again. Granted, I'm taking my Samantha all-in-one book, Addy, and Charlotte--but the more detailed stuff will have to wait a bit. Such is life. I get swept up in life stuff and look up at my calendar and son of a bitch, half of May is gone.¹ But I'm not a news blog, so it's not like I have to report on the new stuff immediately. Speaking of the new stuff, yes I know the following:

• BeForever is Coming AKA the revamp of the Historical line. I'm actually excited for it, even if it means buying a whole new set of Addy books again. And a not!Addy to get that beautiful blue dress. The illustrations aren't so bad, and there's nothing cuter than Addy and her baby sister on the cover of that volume 2, fight me.
• Samantha is coming out of the AG vault, done known for a while. She gonna be paaaaaaaank.
• Cecile and Marie-Grace are looking at retirement, as are Ivy and Ruthie, so I need to get Ivy's Chinese Dress and then figure out what to do with it. Ruthie I never wanted anything for or to have, so eh, and I have all the Cecile stuff I want. 
• Wonderbread's Movie is on the way down the pipeline. I will watch it but I'll be dragged if I'm buying it. That's what NBC broadcasts are for.

Are we all caught up? Good. Now I can do this review and pic blurbing.

One of the neat things about my collection is that I've never felt obligated to just get clothes for any of my gang members from AG direct. Not only do I craft outfits myself, I look at other craft places and outlets for buying: etsy, eBay, Toys R Us, Target,² and the like. I never understood people who only wanted AG stuff for their AG girls; AG makes nice things, but they don't have to be the only people getting your cash money. Branch out, for the love of gods.

One of the sources worth considering is Colonial Williamsburg.³ Williamsburg, Virginia basically has a living museum where visitors can see what the place was like in the era around the time of the American Revolution. I've never had a chance to go--some day, damn it--but I have been interested in it since I was a teenager. They have an online shop, which is how I've gotten everything I've gotten from them. The stuff to buy ranges from books to bedsheets, jewelry to mobcaps. A lot of what they have is for adults and/or the house, but there's also cloth dolls, plush, and patterns. Plus I have an e-mail subscription to their mailing list, so I get discount coupons. A few weeks ago I ordered a set of outfits for Felicity and Elizabeth: two doll dresses in purple and pink and matching straw hats. They also come in children's sizes that match and there are adult sized dresses, but not with matching prints. Alas, there goes my cosplay idea.

It's a touch hard to find them on the site; the best bet is to just search "doll" or go through the Made in America section. (ETA 3/11/17: My links now point to the sets I got.) The items were made in Colonial Williamsburg from reproduction fabric: the dresses cost $35 each, and the hats $16, so you're looking at $51 per set. I had a 20% off coupon plus free shipping, making each set about $41, so relatively good to an AG set--and considering that Felicity and Elizabeth's stuff is all in the Vault and has to be purchased off the secondary market, it's a good cost. This is half review and half fluff pictures, since I took the girls outdoors.

Crafting Creatively - Things I've Made: Elizabeth's Holiday Dress and Historical Accessories Reviews: Elizabeth's Doll

Felicity Merriman and her darling Elizabeth Cole.

I have several self-made historicals, since American Girl can't or won't do a lot of things right, and this has been true since the very first three.¹ There's Edith and Dorothy from 1964 Memphis, Charlotte from 1842 Texas back when it was its own nation briefly, and Kimmy and Tyanna from the later 1980s Seattle, and Addy's best friend Sarah. And there is Elizabeth Cole.

Back story time! When Felicity's books were first written back in 1991 and best friend characters for Historicals were not a thing, Elizabeth was described as tiny, brunette, and with brown eyes. This stayed the way until about 2005, when Felicity: An American Girl Adventure was released. The actress playing Elizabeth, however, was blond and blue eyed. And through the magic of Photoshop this:

Elizabeth 1: Brown and brown.

became this:

Elizabeth 2: Behold, she's fucking blond!

Along with this, all the books were changed to match in the text along with some really haphazard Photoshop over the illustrations.² AG's official statement was to put more contrast between the girls so they didn't look the same, but redheaded isn't brunette so what-fucking-ever I don't know. The blond version--when I was in fandom--got called Barbie!Elizabeth or Mattel!Elizabeth, because Mattel also owns Barbie and if we can't compare everything to that blond tramp of a doll that we're supposed to hate for her nipped in waist and humongous tatas then we're bad doll collectors or something. (I might have issues with people shitting on skinny fashion dolls.)

I don't care for blond-version Elizabeth for multiple reasons, but that is because there are very few books I don't like over movies.³ So a buddy of mine made a brunette Elizabeth by rewigging and eye swapping a blond!Elizabeth, and I later had her join the gang in 2008 during the holidays as a beautiful surprise to her dear Felicity who had desperately missed her girlfriend. I don't know if the woman who made Elizabeth for me does customs anymore--she has kids and had some board shit go down that led to her getting kicked off AGPT and has eased back from doll collecting some--but she made me Elizabeth and Sarah and for that I'm awesomely grateful.

By necessity, Elizabeth Cole needed her holiday outfit. But not the AG one. I never got it, even when retirement was impending. First, let's show what AG offered us, as an interpretation of the dress from the movie:

Uh, no.

Pathetic, isn't it? [/Ursula] There's no side slits. There's wonky full fabric slippers. There's no separate petticoat. And there's no stockings. Gods, and you expected me to put my pretty Brunette Elizabeth in that? Nope. Fuck that shit. The only AG Approved Elizabeth Outfit I have is the riding outfit and nightclothes. So of course I had to make my own. Armed with Felicity's sewing patterns and a physical example of what I wanted to do for the outfit--Elizabeth's Doll, Charlotte--I took my ass to Joann's, bought some satin, and made something nice.

Pretty dresses are so much prettier.

Maroon and gold, lace and satin, and much more accurate for me. It's a gold dress, maroon stomacher and petticoat, and ribbon choker and hair ribbon. I'll go into the details of wear as I review, but not as intensely as Felicity's since they're based the same way.

Bonus: a mini-review of  Elizabeth's Doll.

Historical Clothes Reviews and Historical Accessories: Felicity's Christmas Gown and Stomacher, Invitation and Fashion Doll, and LE Mini Doll

Merry Holidays from Felicity Merriman~

"I'm going to post Felicity's set on the seventh, the day the dance is in her stories," I said with great exuberance on the sixth. My body said differently. Two days past an aggravating headache and a considerable amount of sleep later, we actually start this. Yay, chronic illnesses. Felicity accepts the things she can't change and changes the things she can do something about, and so do I.

Many people really don't care for the beginning of January. This is because we as a society nowadays tend to compress everything. You only have so long to go on vacation, enjoy childhood, mourn deaths or celebrate life changes, and celebrate any and all holidays. Move on to the next thing and stop sitting around in the past, or something. Also everyone's harping on you about your resolutions¹ or something, the gray skies are still gray, the days are only marginally getting longer--say what you want, the sun's still set at five around these parts--and right now a huge part of the country is caught in a polar vortex of cold where blowing bubbles literally will freeze. I much prefer my personal trend of carrying the winter celebrations on as far as I possibly can. And if right now that means continuing the holiday reviews, then so be it. Plus I said I was going to try to cover everyone at least once, and I mean it, even with spacings out of other things such as crafting, customizing, and magazines.

Historically, Christmas and the entire holiday season started to get a bad rap in about the late 1600s, with some places in England and its colonies banning the celebration outright. Christmas was considered pagan, Papist² and the drunken revelry and such was looked down as a vulgar holiday. You can blame the Puritans and hardcore Protestants for that. Like you can for most things. It really wasn't until Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol that the holidays started to reroot in society as a season of joy and celebration. Even then that wasn't about Jesus either, especially in the story. It was about compassion and goodwill towards fellow man, peace, and a time for family and friends. Christmas has always had a secular side since it became the sort of modern situation it is now. "Jesus Birthday" is a pretty modern turn on the holiday, to be honest. (And that's why I'm cool for calling it Giftmas.)

Christmas was and wasn't popular in the American Colonies--it really depended on where you went. Virginia and New York were pretty gung ho for the holiday season, and Felicity is from Williamsburg, VA, so she would have been for the holiday and the Christmastide season. In her story she gathers holly, makes Shrewsbury cakes, and spends time with family--and this culminates in her going to the Governor's Ball on January seventh and participating in a dancing lesson--which is a nice way to say "come and dance your butt off and enjoy things."³ Felicity had originally thought she'd  just wear her brown silk gown⁴ she wore to church every Sunday, but she sees a sample of the dress on a fashion doll and just lights up--and when her mother sees that for the first time she can think of that Felicity wants to have a pretty gown and actually be girly, she indulges her daughter's girliness and gets the stuff to make the dress. This is why I side eye the people who act like Felicity was some sort of 24/7 gung-ho, fuck all your feminine ways tomboy. Lesbians can like pretty dresses too. I like pretty dresses. But this is a outfit review, not a book review, and if I start babbling about the book I'll never ever get to the outfit.

Like Felicity herself, the Christmas Gown and Stomacher (also named Felicity's Holiday Dress) came out in time for holiday 1991. Felicity was the first historical to come out after Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly. Which is weird, because Saint Pleasant the Overly Revered initially got the idea--so the mythos goes--by going to Colonial Williamsburg. (Whatever, Ms. Rowland had and has issues and I'm not above bitching about them at a later time.) The outfit initially consisted of a gown, petticoat, two stomachers--one lace, one ribboned--a ribbon choker, and pinner cap when it was released. The hair ribbon was added in 1993, and white flat shoes with blue bows were added sometime after 2005 with Felicity's revamping because when I got the outfit as my Giftmas gift in 2006 it came with those shoes. Yes, Felicity was also a Giftmas gift like Addy--I got my husband the Wii since I'd just started working at Nintendo, and he got me Felicity and a good starting chunk of her collection, including this dress for the going cost of $28.

Felicity's holiday collection contained several things, much like the other girls before her: the Shrewsbury Cake food set (with Real Sugar!), her Invitation and Fashion Doll, and Noah's Ark--which was a special toy only for the holiday season for the children to play with. While I have the ark, it is not appearing right now because my house ate the little wooden ramp. If I don't find it by this weekend I may assume it got thrown out and make a new one. And I don't have the Shrewsbury cakes set. If I ever come across it for less than a hundred fucking dollars, I'll consider it--I really only want the basket, cloth, and cookie cutters. We can all live without actual sugar from 1991. The Invitation and doll were retired right before Felicity was in 2009 or so, the ark in 2007 (after a few revisions), the cooking set in--sometime, I don't fucking know--and the dress set with Felicity when they put her in the American Girl Vault in 2011, though it sold out before she did. Since Felicity's retirement prices have shot up on everything; her dress goes for upwards of $60 bucks, though with patience you can get it for around the $32 that it was before retirement.

I'm actually about as purist fussy about Felicity as I get about Addy--she doesn't share her clothes with the notable exception of Talk Like a Pirate Day and Elizabeth getting in her clothes in more than one way. Well, to be honest it's to a lesser degree when it comes to getting things for her collection. While I won't blink twice about paying through the nostrils for some of Addy's collection at times--though I do try for bargains--I will not pull the trigger as fast for Felicity. (The costs for that Travel Trunk can fuck off.) But she's one of my favorite girls and I fell in love with her easily--she was the second AG Historical to join my gang back in 2006. When they put her up for retirement I got almost everything for her I didn't already have, which was mostly furniture and accessories. (But not that gala gown, what even was that shit.) I even did a whole photostory series about her arrival that I scooted out over the course of weeks that December: Naomi's Giftmas Surprise.⁵ I also later got her her love, Elizabeth Cole. She's a custom with brown eyes and hair. That blond girl ain't Darling Elizabeth. I'm an original book purist.

I don't have the white shoes anymore. Well I do but they got reappropriated to someone else's holiday wear because I much prefer Felicity in her meet shoes for this set. Of course, this review has the mini-doll. And there will be lesbian innuendo all throughout. There always is with Felicity here, because I ship Felicity/Brunette!Elizabeth hard. Their love is so revolutionary.⁶

Creating Original Historicals for Fun and Frivolity: The Right Doll for the Job

Charlotte had her look picked before she was bought.

You're still working on your Original Historical Character Creation. and, if you've been following my pattern, you've got a time period you like and a name that doesn't suck. So now another step: The doll herself.¹

Not every Historical Character created is going to have a doll, granted. But chances are, if you're into AG and you're creating an American Girl Historical, you probably want to actually bring your character out of the theoretical and into the actual. That's where dolls come into play. Some people buy the doll first and then create the character--especially if they get a doll secondhand or have one they own already they're turning to a Historical--but many times, a lot of things can be laid out before you actually pay for a doll. So some things to think about before you drop the cash on a character.

I'm just saying, if you're looking at a hundred and so dollars new, you might want to think more about it than "oh, why not her?"

Creating Original Historicals for Fun and Frivolity: Naming Tips

Edith May Anderson and Dorothy Gale McNeil. I researched hard.

So you've picked a time period to put your created historical in. Congrats! One of the hardest steps is done. You've picked the decade you want to set this all in. Now on to another hard step: naming your character. Names make the doll--and the character in this case. The name you pick can either cause you to crash and burn or soar and fly.

The main thing is that authenticity will get you. Every damn time. It is the major way people fuck up making a historical character and it's where I find myself face palming every time. If you want to name your character McKayla Piper Wallace, that's all well and good for your modern girl¹, but they didn't name girls that back in the 19th century, and it's really going to jar your authenticity to do that mess.

Let's stop you from naming historical your girl a name that makes us go "Eugh, that's...nice." and get you to to a name that makes us go "Oooo, that's nice!"