Fashion Hobby and Characters

Art is something anyone can do without any expectations to be good at it, so while I share a few older pieces I created on paper and sewing, I hope you feel inspired to create as well.

I use a template model for these drawings, and sketch it onto paper by putting the printed copy underneath, then I cut the designs to the shape I want and glue them in place on the paper model outline. This way I reuse the same templates multiple times. Below are some examples where I used calendar pages, scraps of mesh fabric, magazine cut outs and even hole punches to create funky fashion designs.


As a kid, I loved playing with dolls and doing arts and crafts and sewing, so the combination of these activities led me to design dresses and cloaks for my dolls. I wanted to get them out of the bizarre 80s clothes (hand me downs, as I was not born then), and into something that reflected the more fantasy realm I created for them in my stories and imagination. 

Here are some of the many designs I sewed as a kid (the photos are all taken on an old fashioned digital camera with a green binder as the background, so the quality is poor, and some of the craftsmanship is left to the imagination but that was kind of the point of designing them for my dolls as a kid):

I used fabric, ribbon, and fake flowers and beads, and bits and bobs for their designs. You will see one of the dolls I sewed a lot of clothes for  in the above photos (the doll with the longest hair who I modeled the character of Stella after in Stolen Lives) had a great skin tone for different coloured fabrics, she could wear anything from green to purple, white to red, and it was fun to put her in many outfits. I only have a few photos of them, luckily I thought to even take photos before I got rid of them eventually as a kid. I wanted to have a memory of them in photos because they were a large part of my childhood, but I was no longer into playing games with them. It was time for another child to enjoy those dolls.

Now, I know other kids play with dolls and change their names, but I always gave them one name and it became them, their character, their personality, and I had all these hand-me-down dolls from my sisters and their friends, etc. They just gave me their old dolls, so some are missing limbs and have battle scars and I didn't imagine those away, I wrote them into my characters and the story because those "imperfections" were how they came to me and I cared for them regardless. You will notice a bandage (tied fabric) on one of their feet because it was dangling, I think someone's cat got at it. So, I looked after mine and took very good care of them, but they were a little beat up before they even got to me. Most were losing their hair (glue does that over years and kids bathe with dolls, so probably doesn't help). Fashion design to me was not just about making designs, but more about character design with what scraps of fabric I had at the time. Their outfits helped to shape their characters.

I hope you enjoyed reading and seeing these fun designs as a sneak peak into the past.

-Julia May

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