February 11, 2018

The 2018 Winter Olympics have started and we're so excited!

We have loved figure skating since we were kids. Though "Lee" and "Pearl" technically grew up in New York City, we had a small pond in our back yard (Staten Island can be weird like that) and every winter, we would dust off our skates and watch the weather reports, hoping for a real freeze.

Though we never went far beyond that pond on our figure skates, Pearl later trained and competed as an inline speedskater, a sport that has sent many competitors to the Winter Olympics as crossover long and short track ice speedskaters. Pearl even tried short track ice herself one season, and can vouch that the sport is every bit as challenging (and fun) as it looks.

Four years ago, in honor of the last Winter Olympics, we launched our Pattern 1055: Skating Dresses for 18 Inch Dolls. With its neckline and back-opening variations and realistic, modern-style skirt that hangs smoothly in front and back, with fullness centered over the hips at the sides, this pattern quickly became a favorite in our Etsy shop.

We knew we wanted to make a gorgeous NEW skating outfit for the 2018 Olympics, so we purchased these glorious stretch fabrics from our local JoAnn — a dark gold-and-black holographic "mystique" lycra-blend and a black stretch mesh embellished with tons of glittery sparkle.

We only needed an equally glorious design to go with them.

After studying current competitor fashions, we realized that our Pattern 1055: Short Program and Long Program skating dresses — with their slender, modern skirts — are still very much in style.

But the new one-piece catsuit styles that a number of the more daring ladies are wearing also caught our eye. We started sketching and planning, confident that every element involved in our design could be found in our already-existing performance patterns, so you won't even have to wait for a new pattern!

Here's our American Girl doll Ivy taking the ice in the resulting style — a sleek black-and-gold catsuit with a sweetheart neckline and glittering stretch mesh overlay.

We started this outfit using the "Cat Burglar" catsuit pieces from our Pattern 1054: Superheroes! Cosplay Costumes and Accessories for 18 Inch Dolls.

First, we taped the three pieces that make up the catsuit front and the two lower pieces of the catsuit back together along their seamlines to cut the front and back stretch mesh overlays. Then we cut front and back pieces out of the gold-and-black mystique, with the front sweetheart neckline seamed-and-topstitched to a skin-tone stretch mesh yoke piece. We flatlined the sparkly mesh fronts and backs to the mystique pieces and set them aside.

Next, we cut the sleeves and back opening pieces out of sparkly mesh, and flatlined them to matching skin-tone stretch mesh pieces. Finally, we cut the collar out of sparkly mesh and flatlined it to a matching piece of the gold-and-black mystique.

With all the flatlined pieces in hand, we seamed the back opening pieces to the flatlined back piece as directed in the pattern, then stitched shoulder, sleeve, collar and leg seams as if this were a Pattern 1051 unitard — with the sleeves and collar of the Pattern 1055 Short Program dress or Pattern 1054 Alien Queen costume.

Working with elements pulled from different patterns was a lot of fun. It also taught us that together, these three stretch fabric patterns — Pattern 1051: Ballet Basics, Pattern 1054: Superheroes! and Pattern 1055: Skating Dresses for 18 Inch Dolls — offer a ridiculous amount of mix-and-match flexibility.

With these three patterns, you've got multiple front necklines and back openings, sleeves, a collar, decorative seams, single or double skirts and even legging-style pants — and they're all so easy to use together, as all three patterns are based on the same, beautifully-fitted bodysuit silhouette.

So in honor of the 2018 Winter Olympics, we are happy to make a big, new PATTERN BUNDLE announcement —

Introducing the Lee & Pearl Dance and Sports Performance Pattern BUNDLE

Lee & Pearl™ are thrilled to present a bundled collection of our favorite performance stretch fabric patterns, giving you ultimate mix-and-match flexibility for all your dancing, tumbling, skating and cosplaying 18 inch dolls, at a significant discount from the separately-purchased pattern prices!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE DANCE AND SPORTS PERFORMANCE BUNDLE FOR 18 INCH DOLLS IN THE LEE & PEARL ETSY STORE.

This amazing bundle includes THREE of our popular sport and dance stretch fabric patterns — Pattern 1051: Ballet Basics Leotard, Unitard and Swimsuit for 18 Inch Dolls; Pattern 1054: Superheroes! Cosplay Costumes and Accessories for 18 Inch Dolls; and Pattern 1055: Skating Dresses for 18 Inch Dolls.

With these three patterns, you can make the eight outfits on our covers — or mix-and-match an unlimited number of your own designs, using the multiple front necklines and back openings, sleeves, collar, decorative seams, single or double skirts and even legging-style pants included. They're all easy to use together, as all three patterns are based on the same, beautifully-fitted bodysuit silhouette.

As an ADDED BONUS, we're including two more PDFs with your purchase — our popular ICE PRINCESS TWEAK that includes full-length skirt patterns to turn the skating dress bodices into a range of gorgeous formal gowns, and our SEW EASY WITH SPANDEX ebook that includes detailed directions, tips and tricks to take the fear out of four-way stretch fabric sewing, with or without a serger!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE DANCE AND SPORTS PERFORMANCE BUNDLE FOR 18 INCH DOLLS IN THE LEE & PEARL ETSY STORE.

While you're designing dance and sports costumes, you should definitely make some gold, silver and bronze medals as well, following this easy tutorial from Lee & Pearl:

And here's another tutorial, for creating intricate-looking embellishments using glitter, fabric glue and stencils — perfect for skate and dance costumes!

Welcome new members!

We posted our Space Station photo shoot using the current FREE Pattern for Lee & Pearl mailing list subscribers — Pattern 1025: She Blinded Me with Science — on Facebook, and now we are thrilled to welcome lots of new members to the Lee & Pearl mailing list. Hooray!

We've had several new members ask us about the NASA patches in our photo, so here's that information from the last newsletter again:

The NASA patches were added in Photoshop, but thanks to the dedicated efforts of Bev Runyon from The Doll Closet in Farmington, Iowa — who spoke with Bert Ulrich at NASA — we now know that you CAN LEGALLY MAKE YOUR OWN NASA patches for doll outfits, as long as you strictly follow these style rules:

FIRST: Though there are TWO approved NASA insignia — the "meatball" and the "worm" — you can only use them one at a time. You should never put both the "meatball" and the "worm" on the same item of clothing. This is a BIG no-no.

For the "meatball" insignia (that's the one in our picture, above):

• The official NASA colors are PMS 185 Red and 286 Blue. The full color NASA insignia can only appear against a solid black, white (like our lab coats), gray or silver background.
• A 1-color NASA insignia can appear against a colored background, as long as it is shown with a thin white rule around the circumference of the circle, which is not covered by the vector.

For the "worm" insignia (that's the stylized, curved text version used from 1975-1992):

• The permissible tones are PMS 185 Red, warm gray, white and black against a white background.

For both insignia:

• The NASA insignia cannot be shown in reverse.
• The NASA insignia cannot be distorted and elements cannot be shown separately.
• The NASA logo cannot appear inside another logo.
• The NASA insignia should not appear with names of private companies or private company logos.

And finally, NASA has a strict privacy policy regarding the use of astronaut's names — DON'T use them!

We hope this helps and that lots of doll astronauts and ground control teammates will soon be running around in our Pattern 1025: She Blinded Me with Science lab coats.

If you haven't signed up for our mailing list yet, Pattern 1025 will be our FREE pattern for subscribers just a little while longer. Click here to get your own copy of this fun pattern before it disappears into our Etsy store!

And if you're having any trouble getting the download after signing up, please let us know at info@leeandpearl.com.

And again, WELCOME! We're so happy to have you on board.

What's coming next from Lee & Pearl?

How cute is that...?

We finished re-designing and re-drafting our Pattern 1051: Ballet Basics styles for 16 inch A Girl for All Time® and 14 1/2 inch Wellie Wisher™ dolls — and realized we didn't have any footwear for the pattern model shots. Oh, no!

Pearl set right to work and we are now proud to announce the imminent release of our very first footwear pattern — Pattern 1075: Ballet Slippers for 18 inch, 16 inch and 14 1/2 inch dolls.

We're having so much fun making these little shoes, and we can't wait to share this pattern with you, so make sure you are on our mailing list and we'll let you know as soon as Pattern 1075 and the new Pattern 1051: Ballet Basics sizes are available!

See you next time!

NOTE: Our designer "Pearl" recently discovered the artistic wonder that is unsplash.com, and all the high-resolution, free-to-use images on the site. We'd like to give credit to the photographers whose images we used in this newsletter: Filip Mroz and Rod Long. Thank you!