On the Making of Teeny Tiny Clothing

Lots of cool stuff has been going on since my last post (well I think it's cool anyway), I have been making teeny tiny puppet clothes!! 

I haven't made clothes before (people or puppet sized) as on Distance the inuits thick fur coats were just carved out of foam, and when I needed to bulk them out I just glued on more foam, so I've never done the whole 'making a pattern and stitching' thing before. So I didn't know how well they would turn out, but I am really happy with the results! 

In the first photo you can see the bandanna. I took a strip of material, dyed it the right colour and then glued it to the forehead with craft spray mount. I rolled the edges over to create some detailing and glued them down, it also helped make it look a bit more crinkled which was what I was after. I then got some more embroidery thread that I used for the hair and glued it so it looked like some strands of hair were falling over the edges of the bandanna, so the bandanna looked like it was tucking behind the hair. Things like this seem small, but by just adding those bits of hair it made the whole head look cleaner and more polished, so being as pedantic as that is well worth it. 

I then coated the neck, shoulders and chest in latex, as it needed to look like skin as these areas would show through the neckline of the top. It took a lot of layers to fully cover up the texture of the foam and i kept getting a lot of air bubbles. The finish is not as smooth as I would like, but it is smoother than the hands I made previously so I'm getting better at it at least.

The next thing I made was the long sleeved top. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos while I was making this, as I was just too consumed by doing it to be honest! I got my material and wrapped it tightly round the girl's torso (as I wanted the top to be close fitting), with extra material at the top and bottom. I then drew lines on the material, starting under her arms and going down on both her sides. I also drew lines across the top of her shoulders. I cut this shape out leaving extra material around the edges. I then placed that on a bigger piece of material and after quickly being shown how to backstitch I stitched along the lines that I had drawn, stitching the two pieces of material together. This formed a tube shaped piece of material, with arm holes. I cut off any excess material and then turned it inside out and put it on the puppet - it fit! 

I cut out a neck shape and then rolled the material's edge under, stitching it in place. I wanted you to be able to see these stitches so I didn't turn the top inside out to stitch that part. I did the same hemming process for the bottom of the top. I gave it a diagonal cut because I wanted one side of the top to be longer than the other. 

I got more material and placed it tightly around the arm. I drew two lines down the length of the arm, where I wanted the seam to be (I made the sleeve flare out as it reached the wrist). I then matched up the lines and stitched the folded piece of material together along the line, creating a tube, before cutting off any excess material. I then stitched it onto the top, making sure both pieces were inside out, so you wouldn't see the stitches when they were the right way round. I repeated this process for the other sleeve. 

I then dyed the top the right colour (it was originally white) and then rubbed charcoal lightly over it, rubbing it in until it was fully ingrained and wouldn't come off on my fingers, to give it a grungy, slightly dirty look.

I've tried to describe the process as best I can, but it would have made way more sense if there were pictures! I'll try to take more while I make her hoody.

I am really happy with the top, but things to fix next time round are that the sleeves need to join the top symmetrically (an easy thing to fix) and when stitching, always have way more thread on the needle than you need as running out half way through a line of stitches is really annoying and inconvenient!

The next item of clothing on my agenda was the trousers/ leggings (not really sure which category they fall under) I started off with dark grey material, bleached it slightly, then dyed it reddy purple, before rubbing charcoal over it (this charcoal thing does seem to work quite well!). Because I wanted the trousers skin tight, I decided to just glue the material onto the legs, rather than stitching up an actual pair of trousers. I wouldn't be able to get them over the feet anyway if I were to make a real pair. I made sure the seam was on the inside of the leg.

Even though you wouldn't ever really see the top of the trousers, as the tshirt covers it, I wrapped some more material round the waist anyway, just to finish it off.

I've loved making these clothes, it's been the most enjoyable part of making this puppet so far!