Tag Archives: floral print fabric

One More Fall Ensemble

I have one more fall ensemble and my Little Darling, Gina, is the lucky recipient before I go full steam ahead and create ensembles for Christmas and the holiday season.

I guess fall 2015 is the season of purples. Here’s another ensemble with a shade of lavender and pink, but this one is different. I don’t think I have ever seen a pink like this—cool, but muted. Usually, muted pinks go towards the peach and this one doesn’t at all, nor is it a sweet pink. It is so hard to explain; if I were to mix it up I’d take red and white to make pure pink, add a touch of blue to cool it down, then add a bit of yellow, so it becomes a neutral. Anyway, it is a very pretty and unique shade of pink.

I happened to have the perfect shade of muted lavender wool which matches the stems and vines in the print. For the embroidery, I brought in the merlot color for the colonial knot berries and a coordinating shade of the pink for the bullion, lazy daisy, and back stitched vines and leaves.

I also had the perfectly coordinating shade of merlot heather wool to make a cozy scarf. The scarf can be worn different ways.

Gina didn’t want flowers to hold, she wanted a soft and cuddly teddy bear, so I found this one in a burgundy red and knit him up his own muted lavender scarf with fringe. The scarf is removable too.

This print is very feminine, so lace accents and pearls went nicely with it.

For more information on Gina’s “Sweet ‘n Cozy Fall”, please visit my “Available for Sale” page at cindyricedesigns.com .

Thanks for visiting and reading about Gina’s new ensemble. Bye for now!

Fabric, Fabric, and More Fabric

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Within the past few weeks I have gotten (I don’t know how many) multiple deliveries of fabric. (I don’t even remember all of the sites that I have ordered from as I keep finding more and more online stores with cute fabric.) Anyway, I’ve been looking at this ever increasing pile of yummy colors and cute prints knowing that it will be a while until I am able to start using them, but I wanted to show them to you now anyway because they are too pretty not to share.

As always, there are a few here that I am not sure about, a few that I am super excited about, and the in betweens that will work just fine and perhaps even surprise me with the end result.

It can be hard buying fabric online because it is a guessing game as to if it will work for doll clothes or not. Luckily, 1/2 yard of fabric isn’t too expensive, so if it doesn’t work for doll sewing it might work for a quilt or other project in the future.

Here are a couple of things that I do when shopping for fabric online. To assess the scale of a particular fabric, I enlarge the swatch on my screen to actual size. On my Macbook I hold down the command key and use two fingers to swipe up on the track pad until I reach the desired size. (If I go too far I simply swipe my fingers downward.) Usually there is a ruler laying alongside the swatch, the swatch size is noted, or a size is given for one of the motifs. Having a little ruler handy helps here. Sometimes I will hold the doll up to the screen to get an even better feel for the scale of the fabric. If I am unsure of the color or would like to see more photos of the print I will go to the manufacturer’s website, Facebook page, or look up the designer. Most designers have their own social media sites these days (blogs, Facebook, Instagram, website) and you can see alternate photos of their fabric collection.

Here are a few photos from some of my new fabrics.

Can you tell that I LOVE fabric? My motto (and this is why I have too much) is that if you fall in love with a certain fabric don’t hesitate because it will all be gone in no time. And, probably the biggest reason of all as to why I have too much fabric is that I always try to get free shipping. Who wants to pay for shipping when that cost could go for more fabric, right? LOL

Hope you enjoyed the newest additions to my ever expanding fabric stash.

If you have any online fabric shopping tips that you’d like to share, please do, I’d love to hear them.

Bye for today!

News & New

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I find that it’s a lot of work selling things on eBay. I spent most of the day yesterday gathering items, photographing them, and writing up the eBay listings, not sure if it’s worth the work for the little things, especially if they don’t even sell. We’ll see what happens. I may have lots to donate to Good Will. I think that it is worth it for the larger collectibles as these would not be appreciated (most likely) at Good Will, and that would make me sad.

I spent the this morning packing up five dolls that will be in their new homes very soon. That will make a total of 8 dolls that have started new chapters in their lives: Big Ann Estelle, Lark, Song, White Rabbit, Tamsin, Avery, Zsu Zse, and Anjali. I’m sure they are (or soon will be) very happy to be away from me where they spent too many days not doing much of anything; I am hoping their new families are happy with them too.

While these 8 dolls were very bored with me, there are others who are very, very busy. Here’s Gina with a new ensemble called “Pink & Plum Encore”. I used the smaller rose print which is second from the right. It is a shade deeper and the roses are smaller, but it is from the same fabric collection.

Just for fun, here are the two ensembles side by side. Because we are getting nearer and nearer to cool autumn weather, I made a slouchy beret for the new set.

The sweater and beret set are hand knit with mohair/silk lace weight yarn. The sweater is embroidered with two mirrored image rose bouquet motifs in coordinating colors. The slouchy beret has its own rose motif too.

Gina’s skirt features a deep tuck which overlaps fine English cotton Cluny lace with two hand made rayon bows sewn equidistant from the skirt’s center. These bows match the waistline ribbon tie on the dress. Gina is wearing light pink cotton Lycra tights to keep her legs warm. Sorry, they are hidden by her boots at this camera angle.

For more information on Gina’s “Pink & Plum Encore” ensemble, please visit my “Available for Sale” page at cindyricedesigns.com.

Talyssa’s “An Autumn Rose” ensemble is still available. My Talyssa is getting a bit giddy because she is anticipating that this will be hers to keep. Let’s not make her too happy; if she’s not sitting around naked I will not be motivated to make her anything new because she looks way too cute all dressed up.

If you’d like to bring this ensemble home for your Talyssa or Mei Mei mention the words “sorry Talyssa” in your contact form or email to me and I will give you a discount of $20 off of this set through the end of this week (through 9/4/15 only).

Here’s Talyssa for another look at “An Autumn Rose”.