After my incident where I had to scrub my new resin baby’s butt since the cotton fabric from the new clothes he was wearing left black marks on him, I decided it was high time I did something about the clothing to prevent it from happening again.
Now everyone will tell you to wash your clothes before putting them on your doll to get excess dyes out of the clothing, and this is a good practice because a lot of the time it’s the excess dye that is the problem and not the fabric. However, everyone and their mother’s sister’s niece on DoA will also tell you to then soak your doll’s clothing in a solution of vinegar and water for a couple hours to set the colors, which is very nearly false as I recently found out. Of course it can’t hurt to do this as long as you wash and rinse thoroughly afterwards, but it will not set any dyes on cotton. It will however help to set some acid based dyes on fabrics that have been acid dyed such as silk, nylon and wool, but definitely not cotton.
So, you might be wondering now how in the world you can set the dyes on your dolls cotton clothing which probably take up the majority of your doll’s wardrobe unless you have a bunch of barbie/fashion doll synthetic clothing. The answer is a product called “Retayne” which is a dye fixative that quilters use to prevent one fabric from staining another if they need to wash the quilt. Thankfully Retayne is cheap, you can get a bottle of it for around $2 in stores like JoAnn’s where they also have lots of quilting supplies. You can also order it online from JoAnn’s and various other crafting quilting sites, BUT Amazon lists this stuff for $6, so don’t be fooled into wasting money!
Lastly I want to say that I found out all of this info from this very informative site I found called “All About Hand Dyeing”. You can read the very same FAQ section that I read here:
http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/FAQ/settingdye.shtml
The site also has lots of other useful information on special washes to help remove excess dye, as well as more information on Retayne and it’s uses. Also if you ever have the need to dye something, this looks to be a good resource for that too!
So, I’ve been working on a pair of Unoa sized jeans, and they have proven to be very frustrating. I am using the Unoa jeans pattern in Dolly Dolly 6 (The coordinate recipe thing). Anyway the instructions have you doing the waistband in a rather strange and fanciful way which I am still trying to wrap my head around. I gave up on trying to do the fly their way and just came up with my own way, which in the end made the waistband pattern piece too short, so I had to cut a new, longer one. My other issues with the jeans right now is that they are a little bit too big. I know that the Unoa dolls measurements are just a tiny bit bigger than the AE minis, so apparently that single centimeter in the hips matters just enough. :p
Alright, so here’s the final version of the unfinished dress I posted previously. There are things I like about it, and also things I don’t like, but I think this will be the final version that I will try to sell. Anyway I’m going to make a one-off of this using a fabric with a little flower pattern and maybe give it a ribbon waistband and whatnot. Anything I make for selling, I will be sure to post here as well.