Sew So Small: All starts with scale
May 2020 I started thinking about blogging and doing more with my small doll fashion crafting. Needless to say life continued to happen and the blog did not. Tech struggle, pandemic etc. Skip forward to September and I find myself both at the beginning and at the next stage at the same time. Here is where I started
Happy Unofficial Start of Summer (May25, 2020)
And speaking of celebrations and change - Let’s talk about scale. Doll scale discussions usually focus on Barbie - most people know that Barbie is not actually to scale, and the whole body image is a struggle for a lot of people (me included) and that is not where I want to go. I want to focus on doll scale because understanding them can make your search for goods and furniture much more productive. And even though over sized items can make a cute image, dioramas on the other hand may need to be to scale.
Nendoroid, Obitsu11, Blythe and most other 4 to 6inch (10-12cm) dolls are what is called 1:12 scale. The numbers before the word scale are a ratio. If you haven’t worked with scales like you find on maps, let me explain. The ratio is a multiplication (or really a division) factor. So your 6 inch dolls height is multiplied by 12 = 72 inches or approximately 6 feet tall in real life scale.
It works in reverse too for building furniture and other items. If a typical table were 25 inches tall, then you need to build it to be 2.1 inches tall (25in divided by 12inches). If you were making tatami mats for a traditional japanese room floor, which are 2m x 1 m (or 6ft by 3 feet), here is the math
Converted to cm to make it easier: (1 meter = 100 cm)
Length :200cm / 12cm= 1.66cm (scales are unit less; if working in cm you are converting to cm)
width :100cm / 12cm = 0.83cm
So each of your mat needs to be 1.66cm x 0.83cm to be a 1:12 scale full sized mat. Can you round that off, of course you can, this is your interpretation of scale.
The exercise again for the english standard system would be - Conver original measurements to inches first since you really don’t want to work in fractions of feet. (1ft = 12inches)
Length :72 in / 12in = 6in(scales are unit less; if working in cm you are converting to cm)
width :36in / 12in = 3in
So each of your scaled mats would need to be 6in by 3in.
So that is one side of applying scale, the flip side is applying that understanding if you are shopping for goods and furniture for your darlings. If the product has dimensions, then you can check to see if they match to your interpretation of scale (at scale for accuracy, or off scale for cuteness).
Interpreting scale if it is in the product description will be in Part 2.
Go Enjoy the unofficial start of summer!