Grabbing Bits from a Whirlwind

I was all over the map, literally, all week, trying to come up with a country or p.o.v. on it that hasn't been done and had gathered fabrics for several different versions, and I think I will still do them all. I had Japan, and several viewpoints/sectors of society their fashion, Burma rolling around -- though their traditional clothing, the Longyi, wouldn't really transmute much: it's worn contemporarily and I have a couple I like to wear, and have a "foreign" variation on it. With the Burma idea rolling around, I also wanted to create a Susie travel set paralleling my own, collected and worn around Asia: that one's on the burner.


Then I got to "I can use camouflage for an American Outfit," and put that on the back burner; two different outfits from Japan, both of which I will continue with and both of which I decided didn't vary enough from the originals, though they represented contemporary interests there. Another American Susie was a sort of Southwestern Susie with jeans and a made-over jeans jacket plus . . . . The bits from that, the outfit and props will go with the one I wound up settling on to submit. I'll do it, not say it, so no further description of what it is; two different outfits for "La Frontera" Susie.



Yesterday, pulling more things out of the stuff I brought back after Thanksgiving, I rediscovered the fabric I made her skirt from, worked in the camouflage stockings (which need leather soles intended for use with the jeans), and was preparing to finish up by using a made-over jeans jacket as part of the outfit, attaching the red handwoven Mexican fabric you see in the picture to the top of the jacket, i.e. over the denim jacket foundation, leaving the denim sleeves and collar showing. It would have been a faster solution; however, in the process of laying the fabric over the jacket, I decided to use the red fabric to make a red jacket I've had in mind for a couple of years, one I like one I had had for over 30 years and which was vintage when I bought it and which I sold on eBay before moving to Texas for this ten year period (we're halfway there). I loved the jacket and have wanted to recreate it in doll scale.



Putting it on as an appliqué seemed a waste of the red handwoven fabric, especially when I have had this red doll jacket in mind for so long, so I threw expedience to the winds in favor of divine inspiration.


Chaotic in a sense, like throwing elements into a whirlwind and letting them swirl as I work on each part of an outfit that emerges out of the whirlwind, that finalizes itself and tells me what it is.

. . . and that's how I usually work.

Susie

Too Many Ideas, Too Little Time

Dithering and Dallying

. . . with my slender little Susie.

So many ideas, so little time!

Well, I will enter in one I have already entered elsewhere, as we can enter more than one, and because she does indeed fit the travel Susie or

Susie of many lands theme: the doll I made to represent Fleur Delacourt, the (half-?) Veela from Beauxbatons school in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I made her before the movie was cast or released and both she -- Fleur the Susie doll -- and I were very disappointed in the casting of that particular role. Fleur, my Fleur, actually hissed and spat, as Veelas will, when she saw who was to represent her on screen: Veelas have white hair, and Fleur's was described in the book as a silver waterfall flowing down her shoulders and back. It was an image that stuck with me and while playing with ideas for the white-haired Riviera Susie I had bought for the purpose of a makeover, she announced to me that she was a Veela, specifically Fleur Delacourt.

While indeed, as the Captain of her Quiddich team, she could be a sturdy girl, she didn't read like a stocky muscular girl as was cast in her role.

Veela, or Veelas -- I think it might be a singular mass noun with no plural -- are actual (mythical) creatures outside of Harry Potter books, as are many of the mythical beasts, character names, items, and so on, which is the great value of the book for children who read it: it gives them a grounding for archetypal mythology to be applied later in their studies.

Actual Veela are not as breathtakingly lovely as those described in Rowling's book, nor are they portrayed as youthful. They are some sort of eastern European forest dwellers; I'll have to research it again.

Even Victor Krum is a legendary eastern European, someone like Vlad the Impaler. Enough of the Harry Potter: this Susie represents someone from "that neck of the woods," bad pun intended.