What's on my Desk Wednesday

 This is what's currently on my desk. (aside from a mess of other things that I would prefer to ignore! LOL)

Looks kind of odd, doesn't it? If it helps this is only part of the project.  It's a cowboy hat brim. :-)  

A few years back I was approached about doing a custom outfit for an American Girl doll. Due to circumstances beyond my control the order fell through and never happened.

Before New Years I was contacted by the original customer asking if I could still make the outfit. 

 Needless to say I needed a reminder.  She sent me this adorable picture and I remembered right away. It's Applejack from the My Little Pony cartoon Equestria girls.

I agreed and we set a price. (She also asked me to make 2 additional 'ponies', but more about those later)
I set about searching for the  perfect pattern pieces to recreate a similar outfit.  I found most of them pretty easily on my favorite pattern site: Pixie Faire
They have a huge collection of patterns for not only American Girl dolls, but about 20 other dolls!  (some which will work perfect for BJDS!  Ellowyne Wilde patterns fit Minifees perfectly and BFC Ink patterns fit JID dolls with very little alteration!)

Anyways, back to the hat.  I found a cowboy hat pattern, the problem I found was that the crown of the hat was made up of SEVEN identical parts!!!! Now I get that they did that to make it easier to sew, but it looked, well, it looked like it was sewn from lots of pieces.  I wasn't really happy with it.  So I started doing a bit more internet sleuthing and found a pattern for a cowboy hat for a small bear that used a single piece to form the circumference of the crown.  Much better than the 7 pieces used in the other pattern. So I printed it out and set to resizing it to fit the American Girl heads.  I *think* I have it figured out! LOL

Next up was the brim.  That's what I am working on now in the first picture.
After talking with my customer we decided to go with a solid firm shaped brim as opposed to one with a wire sewn in for shaping.  So I cut 2 matching pieces and lined them with cardstock. Once I get the crown done, the brim piece that is currently solid will get trimmed and the center pieces adhered to the inside layer of the crown (before it gets a lining).  Then the other brim piece will get glued in place and shaped while it is still wet so the glue will cure in the shape I want.
While I can freely admit that I am having a hard time getting motivated to do much these days, this is for sure an interesting project and should turn out really neat once it's done!