DIY Britches

Thanks to the pattern I featured in my previous blogs (6/27/19 and 7/9/18) my muscle dudes have lots of work shirts.  Another issue is pants.  Ken fashions with Velcro closures won't close around the waists of many of my non-Ken dolls.  My Star Trek guys can't wear anything but shorts because long pants won't go on over the molded-on boots.  T-shirt fabric isn't stretchy enough to go over the boots.  It's a dilemma, but I found a lazybones DIY for sweat pants.

I had knee socks that had worn out, in the feet only, as they do.  I was looking for ways to repurpose them into doll clothes.  Ugly Christmas sweaters are pretty common projects, but these socks are mostly zombie themed.  I have made tube dresses in the past, for my 18 inch Pocahontas dolls, but they've since reverted to just wearing their Disney-issued clothes year-round.

I thought "What if I cut a tube dress up the middle most of the way?  Would that make workable pants?"  So I tried it and guess what!  It worked!

I didn't think to take pictures as I worked, so Four and one of my still-intact knee socks volunteered to help me out.  The top of the sock will become the waistband, so position the doll accordingly and then cut straight across at ankle length. 

Put the doll directly on (or into) the sock to find where the crotch should be.  Cut from there to the bottom, creating an inseam.  Then flip them inside out and start sewing!  

My seams don't look purty, any more than the ones on my work shirts, but no one will see them unless man-spreading occurs. I did go through a few trial socks before getting it right, but the results were better than I'd hoped.  Turns out socks are stretchy enough to go over those Star Trek boots! 

Here's a variety of my dudes (and Nancy) modeling the sweats! I have a good variety of body molds so the fit varies.  The Boy told me some of these have ridiculously high waists, but that's easy enough to fix.  You can cover them with a shirt....

.... or turn down the top so it looks like a thicker waist band.

                                                                                                                                                                         

 The real test for doll pants, of course, is the Half-Moon. Most were good, and all but two of the others were fixed simply by turning up the folded down waist.

Hank and Ben switched pants with other guys to see if this was a pants problem or a doll problem.  It's the doll.  Hank and Ben will need to either wear long shirts or sit in the back row.  If they're in these britches, anyway. 

I can now do raggedy work shirts and raggedy sweat pants.  Pike and Sulu can wear something besides shorts, which they'll be glad for with winter coming.  And I didn't have to toss my worn-out socks!  At least, not the whole sock.   

The Home Place

Doll County Day Care, early morning.

Jenny: Oh, boy, new giant dollies!  I love the new center so much!

Fred: And army dudes!

Batgirl: John, I don't think you've met my sister Charlotte.  She's considering your day care for her children.

John: Of course.  Step inside, Mrs. Jackson, and have a look around. 

Charlotte: Why are they all barefoot?

John: You'd be surprised how many germs ride on the soles of your shoes.  Also, it saves injuries if the kids get too rambunctious.

Batgirl (after Charlotte has gone inside): Don't count on her as a client.  She's probably not going to get custody - the judge has already awarded temporary custody to her stepson.  She's just keeping up appearances.

John: Shame.  Your girls were always a delight and if their cousins are anything like them...

Batgirl: Honestly, Joe and I have a better shot at custody than she does.  

John: I didn't know you were trying for custody.

Batgirl: We aren't.

Sylvia: Hi, I'm Miss Sylvia.  Welcome to bedlam.

Charlotte: You work here?  What are your qualifications?

Sylvia: My minor is in Education and I love children.  

Charlotte: And your Major?

Sylvia: Environmental Sciences.  I attend the local university.

Charlotte: What's this?  Surely the children aren't expected to read this?

Sylvia: Guidelines for the parents.  It amazes me how little some of them realize the needs of children.  My personal favorite is number 42.  

Jenny:  Look, Auntie Charlotte!  A astronaut lady doll! 

Charlotte: Be quiet, Jennifer, the adults are talking.

*****

Saturday morning, at the Oriental Buffet.

John: Pocahontas and I narrowed the options down to the houses we're looking at today and we want your opinions, since you'll be living there, too. 

Pocahontas:  If you have misgivings about a place, tell us.  No matter how dumb you might feel it is.  

Anakin: What if Mommy gets permission to have me again?  

Pocahontas: Then you'll have a nice place to visit your sisters.  Trust me, boy, we're still gonna be in your life unless she takes you to Mars.  

Anakin: Or maybe she could come live with all of us! 

Pocahontas (chuckles): I suppose anything is possible.  We're having this conversation, aren't we?  

Roxy: Cause of me and Anakin.

Kelly:  I helped! Dint I help, Nakoma? 

Nakoma: I'm sure you did.  Once we settle on a house, can we start planning a wedding?

John: What do you think?  Me and you could do some male bonding in that garage.

Kelly: I wanna male bondage, too! 

Anakin: Male means boy, you goofball.  Like rebuilding muscle cars together and stuff.

Kelly: Cars don't got muscles.  Daddy, tell him!  Cars got motors!

John (winks at Anakin): Yeah, Anakin, you goofball.  Cars don't got muscles.

Roxy: I like that porch and flowers all around it.

Pocahontas: Yes, but those flower beds take a lot of work to maintain.

Roxy: No problem.  Albus will come do it for us.  He has a nice garden at The Point.

Pocahontas: Albus will have his hands full with his own garden, wherever he ends up.  

Roxy: I still can't believe Batgirl's mean sister is making him move.

Pocahontas: Me, too.  But you know what?  I bet Albus would love to teach you how to garden.  Then, if we decide on this house, that will be your job.

Kelly (crying):  Don't like this house!  It is mean!

Anakin: There at the top of the steps, when you turn the corner toward the bedrooms.  I felt like zombies were gonna bust through the wall and eat me.  

Nakoma: I thought I was imagining things until I saw how you guys were reacting.  Roxy wouldn't even go up the stairs.  But John and Pocahontas didn't notice anything.

Anakin: Kids are more sensitive to stuff like that.  Ghosts or whatever.

Pocahontas: There seems to be a consensus on this house, but it's only three bedrooms.

Nakoma: Are you still on about that?  I told you I'm fine sharing.  But I do think we girls should get that room with the balcony.

Roxy: If we gotta fit three beds in there, shouldn't we take the biggest room?  The blue flowery bedroom is the biggest.

Nakoma: Kelly's is a toddler bed.  We can fit into the balcony room.

Pocahontas: Kelly will outgrow that toddler bed in no time.  Roxy's right.  Besides, I'm calling dibs on the balcony room.  

*****

Ladies' Lounge, Doll County Country Club.

Helena: Lottie Gordon.  I need to have words with you.

Charlotte: My name is not Lottie Gordon, it's Charlotte Jackson. What do you want, Helena?  Going to bully me some more like you did in school? 

Helena: What do you call buying out a major source of revenue for Barbieville and shutting it down?  I'd call that bullying.  

Charlotte:  I don't care.  I came back to rub it in all your faces that I'm not trailer trash anymore, and I'm going to do it.

Helena: No, Lottie, you are still trailer trash.  Money does not buy class. 

Charlotte:  I'll have you know -- 

Helena: I know what I need to know.  You will not put half of Barbieville out of work on my watch. 

Charlotte: You can't stop me.  I can buy and sell you fifty times over.

Helena: You can't buy and sell the entire town if we join forces against you.  And trust me, we will if you keep this up.  

***Reminder to readers: Charlotte's offspring live at Our Toy Story on Facebook.*****  

Creatable World

This one is gonna be very short on the pictures and long on the words.  I even considered putting it on my regular - political soap box - blog.  But as it applies to dolls, I felt it fits better here.

In case any of my readers have been in a cave the last few days:  Mattel has released a line of "gender inclusive" dolls.  Most of the doll community has taken it as Mattel clearly intended.  A few of us, and an awful lot of people outside the doll community, seem to have missed something.  This post is for that group.

1. These dolls are not being marketed as LGBT.  "Gender inclusive" simply means they can be used in play as either sex.  The dolls are the size of Skipper,  Barbie's pubescent sister.  Granted, I have not seen these dolls in a state of undress, but the body mold appears to be clearly a child.  Without genitals, there are no markers of biological sex, and we all know that even the adult dolls have no genitals.   

Get your hands on a doll and ignore anything below the shoulders.  What you are looking at is "gender coding".  This is what marks a child doll as male or female.  Possibly the most common customization done on child dolls is the cutting of hair and removal of make up - turning a girl doll into a boy.  The Creatable World dolls just save us the trouble.

2. The entire point of these dolls is an acknowledgement that traditional gender roles have been dying since the days of Rosie the Riveter.  Today's children are seeing women on the battlefield and men in the kitchen.  Today's children's parents grew up seeing that.  Only the grandparent generation remembers when Wonder Woman was the only super heroine and we were born in the Woodstock era.  Long-haired boys everywhere!

3. As a doll player - I am not so delusional as to call myself a collector -  the important thing to me is the potential of the toy.  The big selling point for me is the articulation.  These adorable children have working joints!  When you consider that they come with several mix-and-match fashions and accessories, the price point isn't bad.

They can be boys or they can be girls whose mothers haven't caved to Big Cosmetics. They can be non binary, if the player so chooses.  And I'm okay with that.  Because it's all about the potential. Oh, yeah, and DEATH TO GENDER ROLES.

House Make Over

This is a long one, so settle in, y'all.

This is the doll house my sister brought me that has thrown my doll corner into chaos.  Fun chaos, but chaos nonetheless.  She picked it up at a yard sale for the use of "one of" the couples talking marriage in Barbieville.  Of course, it's used, but still in very good condition.

Research Whore tells me that it's a Kacy's Department Store by a company called Fortune East.  This picture is from the Internet and shows the product new.  As you can see, the staircase is missing from mine.  No problem - the Pikes have an invisible stairway hall and so can these folks.

To make for easier renovations, it had to come (at least mostly) apart.  Sorted the screws into bowls for later ease of assembly.  I love those silver pillars!  Gonna start with the first floor and rebuild the house as I work.  

I left the side walls on rather than unscrew the eight million screws involved there.  This bit is the first and second floors.

When I saw the food market, my first thought was Pike's store, but later experimentation convinced me that simply wasn't practical.  The water stains along the bottom edge helped me in the decision to make this floor all one room.

Why all one room?  Because Kacy's had the shoe department right beside the food.  Even if I was gonna make this be Pike's workplace, they are a grocery.  No shoe department.

Covered the floor with adhesive shelf liner and the walls with wrapping paper.  Did I mention I love the pillars?   This will probably be the living room. 

The second floor has a bite taken out of it!  Just kidding, it's the space for the missing staircase.  Also, it needs covered.  

A few layers of cardboard cut to fit and a "linoleum" floor will have it ready to play.  Should even stand up to the weekly catastrophe that is The Boy.

WOW!  My choice of wallpaper here is... um... bold.  It was the closest I could get to matching the printed-on coffee shop.  I wanted to keep that while covering the clothing department.  I hope some kitchen appliances will reduce the impact of the stripes.  The coffee shop will be a fun mural in the dining room.  And those pillars!

Third floor will need two types of flooring because one bit is a balcony.

The little bit of faux marble from Sunburst's tables fit almost perfectly.  

Different kind of marble for this floor.  Somebody's fancy.

I like all this except for the couch.  I hate printed on furniture.

Same for this couch and end tables.  Love the polka dot walls, though.  

This wall, with the balcony door, is perfect as it is. 

Used the same marble as the floor and gave the room a wainscot/ledge for the lamps and bowl of fruit to sit on.  The description at Fortune East's website called it the penthouse.   So Kacy lived above the store and had a Warhol-esque portrait of him/herself?  I'll invent an in-universe reason for the artwork.

Here it is!  All rebuilt and ready to play!  

On the inside, anyway.

Most of the exterior will be against a shelf and the side of the entertainment center.  Gotta do something about the parts I can see.  And you never know - the new residents might like to hang out on the roof.

The roofers were here.  Good to go.

A little bit of water damage and the store sign on the side that will be visible need to be covered.  Bummer, though.  I do like that door.

This home features kitchen linoleum, shingles, and siding that match.  I hope to add some shrubs or something eventually, just to add some color.

I'm a Stephen King fan, so I had to give it this address.

The former Frito-Lay display was no longer needed after I reorganized the doll corner.  The base became a full size bed.   A long daybed - roughly 15 inches or 7.5 feet in Barbie scale.  It'll replace the red bed in the Pike boys' room because their room is huge.  

Two of the other shelves, combined for strength and cut to size, also became a day bed.  It's a single and not as long because I made it to fit in the new house.  I knew that insane sports wrapping paper would be good for something.

Used photo frame mats and one of my backdrop pictures to make a window in the living room.

And in the kitchen. Combined with a section of my Unassembled Dollhouse, this will make a cozy little home of three bedrooms and two baths.  I wish some giant would build me one of those.

Look What Else My Sister Made Me Do

Busy, busy, busy!

If you didn't just read that in the voice of the magician from Frosty The Snowman, go back and do it correctly!  For Shame!

My clear tape hinges were not working.  I decided that the exterior need not be shown, measured the space for the other wall to pop into place, and glued on craft sticks as connectors.  

Works very well!  Sometimes I amaze myself!  This will be Pocahontas's new office space.  Albus donated his modern art.  Giants need to watch where they're walking.  

I already used this set in a story.  Pike's remodeled (again) office and a break room.  Gotta find something to cover the torn spot, but otherwise it's good to go.

Put the reverse sides together and you get Doll County Day Care.  

This is the reverse of the barn scene that was behind the Pike family deck.  Forgot all about it.

Wally World had my shelf in stock finally!  Most of the knick-knacks came off my dresser, which gives me a nice big flat surface for setting scenes.  Still gonna have to put Sunburst on the floor since the park needs to be way over there, but everything else will work great.  (Where are Cleo and Lagoona?  They belong in this shelf!)

Which leaves me the new house and other backdrops to work on.  (Oh, there's Cleo's noggin behind my tea.)  I have decided that the still unused piece from my Dismantled Dollhouse purchase is gonna work with the house to be a nice big home for Barbieville.  If the Pikes can have a "basement bathroom" that's not attached to their house, this house can have rooms floating around unconnected, right?