A Suit for Trent

I didn't own a Trent until Gene's 2010 convention in Philadelphia, I went home with three Trents.

Dreamy Trent

Image Property of Integrity Toys 

 

 

Men's Club Trent

Image Property of Integrity Toys

 

 

I also attended a class on flocking hair on dolls.  I bought the flocked Trent, but my flocked Trent only came wearing boxers.  I had received a shirt and some other men's accessories as a table gift at the Trent luncheon so my poor flocked Trent has stood around in my sewing room wearing only a shirt and boxers for the last 5 years.  I thought about making him some pants and finding him some shoes to wear, but I never got around to it.

 

 

 

 

Then along came the JAMIEshow Trent.

 

Image Property of JAMIEshow

 

 

Image Property of JAMIEshow

 

I told myself I wasn't going to buy him.  I wasn't going to buy him!!!!  Then people started posting picture of him on the doll boards and Facebook, and I caved and bought him.  I fell in love with him, and then next thing I know I was thinking about sewing for him.

 

 Here is my first suit for Trent.

Let me just start by saying that Trent's suits should sell for at least double the price of Gene's clothes.  There are so many details in menswear even for a doll.  It took me 6 attempts to make this suit.  I am happy with the results, but I plan to tweak the fit a little more before I make more suits and sell the pattern.

 

 

This is the same taupe wool fabric that I have been working on for a month or so.  The color is darker than it photographs.  The buttons were really hard to find to match this fabric and look much better in person than they do in the pictures.

I am not crazy about the fit in the back, or the fact that it is impossible to get the back vent not to gap open.  I was stressing about the fit, then I compared my jacket to the two jackets that I own and decided that my fit is better than the "Dreamy Trent" and "Men's Club Trent" jackets.

My JS Trent is also standing without a stand, which is awesome, but to keep him from falling over he is standing with a swayback.  I think that is part of the reason the back doesn't look as good as I would like it to.

His pants are a little long, I may change that.  His JAMIEshow shoes are a work of art.  The shirt and tie are borrowed from Tonner's James Collins.

 

Squee!!! Check out his bum!!!  I made faux welt pockets!!!  And belt loops!!!

 

 

I have plans to make more clothes and patterns for Trent in the future.  I hope to take a few things to Sandra Stillwell's convention in August. 

"Something's Got to Give" Suit Part II

I can't believe how much time has passed since my last post.  I kept planning on posting, but then I would tell myself to wait until I finished this project or that project.

Even though I still haven't finished the large batch of awesome outfits and the patterns that I made last year for Sandra Stillwell's convention in New York, I decided to tackle a couple of commissions that I had been waiting to make.

I made this suit back in 2012 as a commission for the Franklin Mint Marilyn Monroe doll.  I chose to make it in a cream wool with cream velboa fur.  Finding non-wavy velboa is not easy and I feel lucky to have found it on-line.

I had always intended to make it again for Gene and the Tonner dolls.  Another customer wanted me to make it for him, but he wanted the fabrics and fur to be more taupe in color like in the movie.

 

I have been looking for the right taupe fur and suiting since 2012.  I finally found a nice taupe fur, but I decided the fur was too fluffy for this outfit.  It was still all I had, so I started looking for the suiting next.  Oh my goodness, taupe is a hard color to match!  I bought two different pieces of taupe suiting and decided to make the suit in both fabrics and let my customer decide which one he liked the most.

 

I still didn't know what I was going to do about the too-fluffy taupe fur when one day an idea popped into my head.  Was it possible to trim the fur shorter using hair clippers?  I found some videos on youtube and decided to give it a try.

 

Here are the results:

 

 

When I found this light-weight wool and a fabric store in Portland, Oregon, I was thrilled.  It was the perfect match to the fur!  This taupe has a grey-green tint to it, I also loved that it was a nice quality wool.  The suit turned out darker than I would have liked to be.

Honestly, the colors in my photographs looked better than they do in real life.

My other taupe looked more like the color of the suit in the movie.  I didn't love how it matched the fur at first.  I kept getting thrown off by the green color of the fur.  The more I looked at it though, the more I preferred it and so did my customer.



Again, the colors look better in these photos than they do in real life.

I still wanted to make more of these suit to sell to my other customers, but after trimming the cuffs, collars, hats, and skirt trims with hair clippers, I decided I did not want to do that on a larger scale.

Clipping the fur was very time consuming, messy, and made my nose itch.  I decided to go back to my trusty cream wool and cream velboa fur.

 

I came up with a way to make the hat adjustable to fit over different hairstyles.

Trent wanted in on the photo shoot because he is new.  He is looking very dashing in this suit stolen off the back of a Tonner James Collins doll.

 

I will be making this suit to fit the Franklin Mint Marilyn doll and also to fit Tonner's Marilyn doll soon.  I will also be making this suit up in pink and yellow jacquard.

 

To purchase this pattern click here.