Dolly Interlude

A week or two before Costume College, I went to the St. Vincent De Paul thrift store up in Port Orchard.  Probably combining that stop with an errand to Joann Fabrics since the nearest one to me is just down the street from that particular thrift store.  And there I found, for $8, an American Girls doll.

I'd known of them before, but my interest had probably been piqued by Lady Rebecca, who posts both costuming and American Girl doll videos on YouTube.  (And I did see her a few times at CoCo... and on the Sunday she had her Kirsten doll with her, and was cosplaying to match her.)

So for $8 I bought myself a dolly.  (And I can hear my mother groaning about how I am just like my grandmother.)

I let her sit on top of the toys shelving until I got back, then lint-rollered away the dust that had been on her in the store cabinet, and set to work detangling her hair.  There are no "before" photos.  Why am I so bad at taking before photos?  And I set to researching which one she was.  Apparently her name is Nicki Fleming, one of the "modern" dolls.  Also apparently the patterns that The Pleasant Company printed and sold for the dolls back in the 1990s are available to download online.  Which I did.  Plus I also had a handful of 18" doll size patterns I'd picked up at the thrift store at some point.  So, using the "Kirsten's Pretty Clothes" pattern, I made a few things out of scraps of linen left over from Costume College sewing.

Chemise and pantaloons.

Petticoat - actually not using the pattern because I didn't realize there was one for this.  The lace I got at CoCo.

An unlined red dress, made from a remnant in the bins of fabric I hold onto and tote around for the quilt guild.  Trimmed with baby rick-rack.

And an apron to go over the dress.

After watching several Sewing with Nancy videos with Joan Hinds, about making 18" doll clothes, I decided to try lining the bodice to make several more seams enclosed, and thus cut down on the need for as much fray-check.  So then came this dress:

Which has nearly invisible growth tucks.  And, hey, Nicki now has shoes and socks!

Still, I hit one or two small snags, which did not render the dress unwearable.  But I figured out how to resolve those on the next dress, and made this outfit from a very-happy-to-fray tweed I picked up at Costume College's Bargain Basement:

And a matching hat!  I accidentally cut the skirt where it was on the fold, thus that bit pieced into the center front.  There wasn't enough fabric to cut another skirt piece out.

So I think now I've finally figured out this sewing-for-dolls thing (she says confidently, haha...), and with her mother's approval, have bought Niecelet a used Kirsten doll (her favorite of the AGs thus far) for a Christmas gift.  She'll have arrived, stained and naked, by the time we get back from England, and I'll give her and Nicki a thorough cleaning and destaining then (Nicki has a mark on her lip, and one on her leg), and make some more clothes.

Costume College, pt. 2

On Friday I wore my Roman garb, which was oh so comfy.  Having watched several of Janet Stephens' videos on Roman hairdressing, I was left with the impression that doing it properly would require a second person, which I did not have.  (I had tried the Aphrodite knot, which could be done solo, and it looked stupid on me so clearly I was not doing it correctly.)  So I winged it - did my hair into eight braids and criss-crossed them on the back of my head.  No pics; no ideas if it looked okay or not.  I did get a couple questions about what era I was dressed as - most guesses were Viking.  Alas.

Saturday I wore the beaded refashion dress, which I'll go over in another post, and on Sunday I wore this:

The shoes are from Clark's, many years ago, and are probably not quite right for the decade, but they're comfy and I already had them and they're close enough.  I made the dress following the classic "one hour dress" pattern, which is a misnomer.  Underneath, I wore this:

The linen chemise is also made using that same pattern, and the corset (because women, especially us stout ones) did not just give up their corsets in the 1920s!) I sized up and adapted from Norah Waugh's book Corsets and Crinolines.  It's a single-layer corset, more like a binder really, with spiral steel in the seams.  I got the rainbow garter clips and the back-seam nylons both from Sock Dreams.

I added a little bit of an accent on the sides to cover the gathers.  And to make that navy blue neck tie look less out of place.

And some almost invisible details... there's three tucks on each sleeve because I thought that would be fun.  Not sure if you can tell in any of these pictures, but there are threads of silver (probably mylar?) running through the otherwise 100% linen of the dress, adding just a little sparkle.

And on the inside of those gathers shown up above, I wrapped a strip of bias tape around the exposed raw edge.  Because linen does like to fray!  And I finished each seam edge with rayon seam binding.  Because what use is it, making a dress, only to have it fray to uselessness after five or ten washes?