How's your first weekend of '09 treating you...?

Hope everyone had a great first weekend of 2009 ! I spent New Year's Eve happily sewing a doll dress I cut out in August, but never progressed it beyond that. Well, clear the decks, as they say...

Only problem was, I've taken most of 2008 off from sewing, minus some holiday projects. So my doll clothes sewing skills were rusty to the extreme ! Took me over an hour to complete two simple hems successfully. Yikes. In an effort to keep my hands busy - and out of the fridge and snack cabinet ! - I'm challenging m'self to sew something new once a week, using a pattern I've never used before. I started a similar challenge for my Barbie-size dolls last year, but I was trying to sew something every day, and it just got to be too much.

So I think once a week will be good for me. One other thing it'll keep me out of - the dreaded eBay ! Was nosing around, 'just looking', earlier in the week when I found a gorgeous Barbie-scale pattern book. Sure, it was in Japanese, but I already have several, and their directions are profusely illustrated, so ya don't really need to know the language to get a good result.

Only problem was, we're broke. Oh, sure, I probably could have squeeeeezed out the then-$14. bid out of the grocery budget, but... who knows what we'd have to cut because of it ? So I didn't bid... and it closed at $25. anyway. I was kinda proud of me for not giving in.

Day after New Year's, I typed up an index to my Barbie Pattern Catalog. Two summers ago, I printed out images of every sixth-scale pattern I owned, so I could leaf through them for ideas. Used the library printers for much less than my printer would have cost, too. But I never made an index.

Color me surprised to learn that the Catalog was over 225 pages of patterns ! And at least four individual outfits per page - some have more, others less - that's a serious body of potential sewing ! And most I've never touched beyond scanning it. Well. I updated it with the fifteen new patterns that weren't in the Catalog, and thanked Everything again that I hadn't gone after that Japanese book.

Y'know what's really sad ? The Pattern Catalog *doesn't* include my computer software patterns, or any of the patterns I have for my other dolls - like my Tonner pair, Timey Tell and Hi Dottie, the My Size Barbies, the LIttle Disney Princesses, Beautiful Crissy, the miniature dolls, or the rest !

So, as with fabric or anything else, the cure for wanting something new is to go through what you already have ! If your stashes are at all like mine, that'll take all day, and you won't have time to shop !

Sometimes, it is such a relief to be broke...

Oh, and here's a photo of the doll dress I made from the Japanese pattern book I already have -

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This is Erika, a yard sale doll, in one of my sewing creations !