Project Kitbash - SIM

IT’S THE FIRST OF HALLOWEEN SO I’MMA POST THESE even if it is a day late for TMI!Tues =p

Guess what I finished?  Sim has sort of turned into a catchall ‘sona, to be honest.  So that’s sort of why her outfit here in 3D form turned into a mishmash of what I drew her in to start with and some of the various bits the other versions of me show up in – probably that bustle most notably (the jabot that usually accompanies it – both of which I do own btw – turned out to be too hard to replicate at this size, so I went with the ribbon instead), and maybe the green brooch from the MGsona..which actually does glow in the dark.  Also featured, and things I am particularly proud of, are a mini version of last year’s witch hat (and the selfie that currently serves as my avatar) and a mini version of my HP-style wand (because yes, I am that much of a nerd).  More props and outfits will probably be added eventually.  I have a few ideas percolating about some of the creatures Sim has ostensibly made, as well as the Fuller Flyer (see Halloween 2K14).

So, nuts and bolts…featuring what I’m coming to think of as ‘felt technology’, which will make more appearances later:

The skirt and blouse are both made from requiemart patterns (a birthday present to myself), which I must say even considering my innate inability to work well with patterns, not to mention the poor fabric choice for the blouse, were actually very easy to put together.  Requiem, your patterns are awesome, very well worth saving up for, and I will definitely be getting more of them eventually…once I figure out what fits Picco Neemos =p

I learned two very important things while sewing on this:

– God Bless Fray-Check

– Ruffles are fun to draw, and a major bitch to sew

The skirt should ideally be a trumpet-skirt, but I wasn’t sure how exactly to modify the pattern pieces for that and was on a bit of a deadline anyway, so…  The blouse is accented with satin ribbon (which made the sleeves too long, hence the elastic sleeve-garters) and black seed beads.  I just glued the back seam shut since Sim’s head is made to be removable and I could just pull the blouse down over her neck easily enough.

The cincher/underbust corset-type-thing is based on one I actually have and in this case is made from scratch out of felt.  It laces up the back with embroidery floss.  The ‘grommet’ holes were just cut out with some nail scissors and then reinforced with fabric paint because I can never get to the craft stores while they’re open.

Here’s where the felt tech comes in.  Sim’s head is just a simple ‘pattern’ cut from a printout of the text character, with two strips of felt for the gussets.  I wanted an effect sort of like the way I drew her.  It attaches to her neck by way of a basic foam ‘socket’ based on measurements from the original head from the doll (an EAHCerise).  It didn’t exactly work perfectly – part of the problem is the pipecleaner inside there to make her a little poseable and this increase the range of expressions possible.  I also did a little sculpting with a felting needle once she’d been assembled, because her head didn’t seem clear-cut enough to me.  Additional felting like this will compact whatever felt and stuffing is already present and helps to add concrete form to things if you want it, but here it also unfortunately resulted in the pipecleaners becoming visible.  So she also got a wash with some white fabric paint.  Fortunately that didn’t impact the natural self-adhesive qualities of the felt :D

The glasses are made the same way I did Monogram’s (just much much smaller and without any paint) – cut from felt and with fabric stiffener added.  Sh’bam, easy peasy.

Those various emotions there were a bit harder.  I guess I could add stiffener to those as well, now I think about it, but for the time being they’re just cut – very meticulously – from felt scraps.  As demonstrated, they stick pretty darn well, so I’m really happy with how that turned out, because it was one of the aspects I was a little worried about.

The witch hat pattern comes from here and is much easier to handle than the full-sized one…another of which I’ll be sewing on soon enough.  The ribbons on both the hat and the bustle had to be hand-painted.  The wand was assembled from scratch using a toothpick, a seriously trimmed-down piece of super-skinny dowel rod, and another seed bead.

Extra hands pictured are just a couple sets of the Cleo hands I have hanging around.  Luckily they match Cerise’s skin tone well enough that they look semi decent in my crap photos.  I’d have preferred to use a Duchess for this, but the prices for the bait dolls are even higher than they are for her in-box, and I have no idea why.  Duchess still hasn’t appeared in any of the Walmarts I can get to, anyway.  But that’s just me bitchin’ XD