The Time Matte Varnish Completely Messed Up My Perception of Reality

I was told by the few sites I found for Lalaloopsy customizations that the best thing to do after painting a doll is to spray it with matte varnish.  Apparently it's what the doll manufacturers use to finish the dolls in fact.  So I picked up a can of spray varnish for $3 at Menards and got to it in the basement.  Now, matte things mess with my head.  I mean, you spray a whole bunch of stuff on and it actually seems to dull the color.  I don't know why my brain can't comprehend this, but I can't tell you the number of times I'll put matte coat on my nails and just sit there rubbing at it after it dries trying to understand the universe.

Anyway.

As far as the dolls went, I did 3 coats in quick succession (the canister said to spray, let it dry for 90 seconds, and then spray it down again) and then I let them dry for about 5 minutes and ta-da they were dry and nice.  It said to let it dry for 24 full hours before giving it to small children, and I am 19 but I consider myself a small child in most aspects so I allowed it the full time to dry.  (I'm kidding, I mostly didn't want to get anything stuck to them in the case I found a little pool of still-undried varnish.)  But here they were all painted and finished!

complete with a comparison to the originals

 I will add a little disclaimer here that the varnish 1) freaked me out and 2) it did actually change the texture of the bodies.  Instead of the sort of rubbery feel to the arms and legs, it gave them more of a hard plastic feel.  Not that I mind, but in case anybody is reading this blog looking for advice on their own customizations.  Especially if you're giving the toy to small children, I think there's probably a lot of things you might want to consider first, this being one of them.

Now that the whole varnish thing is over and done with, on to the clothing!
So I have never made doll clothes before in my life.  Never for my American Girls, never for Barbies (though my mom did make a tent for Barbies once.  and sleeping bags.  and a girl came over to my house for a sleepover, got jealous, and sat on the tent.  12 years later and you can see I have never let this incident go.)  I have no idea how to make doll clothing, and all the patterns for Lalas that I can find online are (predictably) fluffy dresses.  Or at the very least they're all sleeveless.  I need the opposite of these things.  So it's basically all trial and error from here.

I went to Jo-anns with a 40% off everything coupon and this is what I came up with.

I was going for some of that shaggy curly super-soft fabric for the furry pants, but our Jo-anns is tiny and lame and I had to dig for this one as it was.  It's not as painfully neon in person.  I actually went in looking for the brightest orange I could without going full-out blacklight-reactive hunter.  It looks a little hunter-esque in the shot, but actually it's the most perfect shade of orange I could have hoped for.  Also I've always wanted an excuse to use this wobbly soft fabric and it's so very Cecil that it's perfect.  

The plaid is for Carlos because I think we know he wears flannel canonically.  Or plaid.  I forget which, so I went with both.  But I always always see him drawn in red plaid which we might be told it's red too now that I think about it, but I like to think he's allowed to shake things up a bit sometimes.  so super-soft purple plaid flannel it is!  There's also some off-white muslin for the tunic, and some stark white muslin for the lab coat in there.  The other fluffy looking stuff is for a completely different project involving Star Wars and guitars.  Do not ask.  Do. not. ask.  

Bonus photo of some other fabric I found on the prom dress rack that is also so painfully Cecil, but also so painfully expensive - 40% discount or not.

yes those are tiny rhinestones on each tiny camo ruffle

My mom is really good at sewing.  She's never made doll clothes either, but we figured we've freehanded patterns for antebellum ballgowns before, so what's a few doll clothes?  We vastly overestimated the required lengths of fabric for it all as well, so I figured it's okay to trial and error it with the actual fabric in the off chance that we get lucky. [muffled Daft Punk begins playing in the distance]

here we have vague attempt #1 at a flannel shirt.  The pieces were drawn out on paper prior to cutting and when (if) I figure out a good pattern for this stuff I'll be sure to scan it in here, again in the case that any readers might want to try making their own Lala clothes.  unfortunately this pattern was not functional since his hands are wider than his noodle-y little arms and therefore cannot fit into the sleeves once we sewed them up.  I plan to try again this afternoon with a bit of an enlargement to the pattern.  

Meanwhile Cecil had slightly better luck in the clothing department. 

here we have some scrap yarn in purple, teal, and orange.  (leftover from Vanellope Von Schweetz legwarmers, a Monsters Inc. sweatervest, and a Charmander plushie respectively)  I've never knit doll clothes before either, but it's a poncho - how hard can it be, really?  These are the smallest needles I had (2.5 mm) which were only .25 mm larger than the pattern called for.  Oh, by the way I used this pattern and sized it down to 27 stitches to start off.  I also put the suggested YO holes in the third row for a drawstring and followed their color pattern, but sized down by 1/2 (ex: they suggest 10 rows of a color, I did 5).  The results are as follows:

now don't get me wrong, I love it - I really do.  But I think I'm gonna toss it and start over and I'll tell you why.  I really loved the stripey color pattern, but I feel it didn't do an accurate job of being as weird as I would like.  Also I don't like that I put the row of orange at the top if I wanted to make the drawstring orange.  My blue yarn is also a wool blend, so it knit up really tightly into a solid.  Like.  We're talking posable poncho here.  I dug in my Doctor Who yarn bin and found some Caron yarn in a shiny teal, so I think I'm going to remake it in that since it'll be more even and a little looser and drapier.  (I know, I know, all these yarns are way too thick to be using on this but I'm broke so it's just gonna have to happen this way.)  Also I would shorten it to the length of the last thick teal row I think, and then do the BO so that it's not as long.  My mom thinks it's really feminine, but since I think Cecil wears whatever the heck he wants, I'm not too concerned.  What I am concerned about is that it isn't actually as weird as it could be.  So I'm considering this:

Make the whole poncho in teal with no color changing except at the CO, BO, and the bottom row of orange (which would also decrease the mess of ends to be sewn in), and then I'd duplicate stitch some kinda tendril-ey, sort-of-tentacles climbing up from the BO edge.  it would be nice and Night Vale-ian instead of just being clashy.  I've never done duplicate stitch though so it would also be a challenge and I'll probably regret the decision.  Which of course means that I'm going to start it immediately.