"Hajimete no Maid-Fuku -Dollfie Dream-" Sew-Along

((This thread's formatting is a work-in-progress! I'm doing the write-up on my computer but pictures are all on my phone!))

Hello all~
For the past couple of weeks I've been working on sewing some dresses out of the Dollfie Dream pattern book Hajimete no Maid-Fuku by Araki Sawako. When I started out in this hobby I could neither sew well nor read Japanese, so I'm having fun flexing both of those skills~

I'm making a thread for my progress. I'll try to keep it interesting for both the sewists and the non-sewists.

WHAT'S IN THE BOOK?

The included patterns are:

• One piece dress in L/DDdy bust sizes. The skirt pattern is a half-circle shape. There are variants for short or long sleeves, short or long+ruffled skirt, standing or Peter Pan collar, and plain or bib neckline. 
• Two piece dress (blouse+skirt) in L/DDdy bust sizes. The skirt pattern is a gathered rectangle with a ruffled hem. The sleeve options are the same as the one-piece.
• Aprons. Short and long semicircular aprons with frills, plus detachable bows + front bib/shoulder straps/shoulder frills.
• Two petticoats, a short A-line for cotton eyelet and a long bell-shape for tulle
• Various styling accessories:
  • three headdresses: an usamimi bow, an oversize ribbon bow, and a classic frill katushya
  • a square/sailor collar
  • a round detachable collar
  • two sizes of detachable wrist cuffs
  • socks
• A bandeau bra and panties with tulle ruffles, in L/DDdy bust sizes.

Everything has a lining to protect your doll from dye transfer. The lining installation is interesting and not like sewing for people at all!

INITIAL PREPARATIONS
The first thing I did when I got the book was to have all the patterns photocopied, because the foldout is double-sided and can't be cut out directly. Because many of the pieces need to be traced and cut at least four times (lining and outer fabric, left and right sides), I mounted the copied patterns to sturdy cardstock and cut them out to use as stencils.

To make it easier to cross-reference the immense pile of fiddly little pattern with the instructions in the book, I wrote the page number with the relevant instructions on each piece. I color coded them with the page header colors to make it quicker to identify pieces as I needed them.
(continued)

FIRST PROJECT: Long Dresses for Winter


MATERIALS
It's easy to find black and white maid dresses in production, so for custom dresses I wanted to choose a less-common palette within the same traditional balance of light and dark. I love the paintings of Japanese fashion artist Sakizo, whose watercolors feature soft colors and profusions of frills in warm-toned ivory and cream. I chose to use a color scheme of dark brown and light beige with contrasting white lace in an attempt to get the same kind of opulent feeling. I hope that using off-black and off-white will help the details show up more on display and in photographs.

I chose a lightweight linen for the body of the dress to give some interesting texture, a smooth cotton shirting for the apron and contrast pieces, and a white voile for the stain-protective lining. I picked cotton lace to match the matte textures of my fabrics.
 
Everything was prewashed on hot with Oxiclean to remove any fugitive dye from the brown fabric.

STEP 1 - BODICE

The pattern book comes with bodice patterns for the Dynamite and Large size Dollfie Dream busts. I thought my girls would look more interesting on display together if I emphasized the difference between their body shapes, so my Alna will be wearing her Dynamite bust with this outfit and KOS-MOS will be wearing her Medium.

I made a couple of pattern alterations. Because all of the bodice pattern pieces need to be cut in lining and in outer fabric, you can use your lining as a muslin to test the fit. The Dynamite pattern utilizes princess seams plus waist darts for shaping. The pattern fits well as printed, but I've done some couture sewing for cosplay and I Like To Make It Look Like The Illustration, so I added a horizontal dart across the bust to counteract the boob-loaf effect.

The Large pattern uses angular bust darts and waist darts for shaping, which I didn't think looked very pretty next to the curved seams on the Dynamite size, so since I was taking it in anyways I converted it to princess seams.

The bib neckline portion of the bodice pattern does not include instructions to interface. I highly recommend doing this to keep your folded-under edges from showing through, especially if you're using a thin light-colored fabric over a dark-colored fabric.

When I sew for humans I always iron over a dressmaker's ham (a stiff sawdust pillow) to shape seams over areas with compound curves, like busts and shoulders. It makes a big difference! Dolls are little so I just used some tightly-wadded paper towel and ironed over that.

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Chilmark
typos

STEP 2 - SLEEVES
All the dreses in the book use the same set of sleeve patterns, a puffed upper sleeve that can be combined with a cuff or a fitted lower sleeve to make a combination of lengths.

The markings on the pattern are nonsensical as far as I'm concerned. he sleeve head is marked "left" and "right", which doesn't mean anything to me in terms of how a sleeve is spatially oriented: I would expect it to say "front" and "back". On an asymmetrical sleeve pattern, the longer side of the curve always goes in the front.

I made modifications here too~

The first is that I extended the puff of the upper sleeve to make it fuller at the bottom. Think of Violet Evergarden vs Saber.

The second is based on the way that Victorian puff sleeves were historically made. To get the most graceful poofiness and to fold smoothly in the elbow, the sleeves need to be cut on the bias of the fabric (ie lined up diagonally across the weave, instead of parallel or perpendicular to it). I pulled individual threads out of my linen and voile to make a faintly visible perpendicular grid, and then traced the pattern pieces so the grain line was at a 45 degree angle to these guidelines.

The assembly method is interesting. The puff is flat-lined (the lining is sewn directly to the outer fabric), but then the narrow part is bag-lined (sewn up as a long tube and then the tube is turned back on itself). Then the lining of the narrow sleeve and the lining of the bodice are hand-sewn over the puffy section.

They're SO POOFY!

😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your progress as you work through this book! I'm sure translating and figuring out patterns mst be challenging! 

Very nice. I’m looking forward to seeing more of this project. 

This is gorgeous! I love how well you’ve gotten it to fit (I know it’s a pattern, but as with corsets, a couple mm off for a seam and the whole thing fits wrong).
 

I always appreciate seeing people work through patterns because I like to know the end result can look as detailed and well-fitting as a store bought item (not always the case for fashion and 18” doll clothes for instance). 

I have found that for human clothes though at least, Japanese patterns are fantastic and really innovative in their seaming. So far for dolls (and “for dolls” is a stretch—it’s technically a pattern book for humans but the clothes are modeled on a BJD) I only have the Pattern Magic series (which has a 1/3rd sloper in the back made to fit an Volks SD I’m not familiar with), but I’ll have to look this up.