Projects and the return of Paige and Zihu

  I have finally worked out what I'm doing with my bjds! It's only taken me over five years! In December I ordered two new Iplehouse kids. Celina in white skin, to take over Zihu's old role of Claudia from Interview with the vampire. She hasn't arrived yet but I'm already working on clothes for her. That's what my fabric painting in the last post was from. (By the way, washing the paper off went terribly. The printed lines stayed stuck to the fabric and when I finally got them off, they took the paint with them. But I had a redo with plastic backing and it worked, so no big drama.) I've been studying the movie to do costume sketches and I kind of plan on rereading the book and writing down any clothing descriptions. I'm putting it off though because I'm pretty sure the clothing descriptions are mostly just a colour followed by the word silk. Ugh. Silk is too vague a word. It can mean anything - velvet, satin, organdy, shantung, ugh, ugh, ugh. It's like the word Victorian. It covers too much to be helpful by itself.

The other kid I've ordered is Daisy in peach gold skin. I spent weeks agonising over whether to get her in peach gold or special real skin. I didn't want another normal skin doll, because they're a bit too pale. At the end of the day, the decision came down to the fact that Iplehouse's real skin looks a tad sallow to me. Then when you consider that resin yellows with age, in a few years that's going to look like she's got cholera or liver disease. So even though it's a tiny bit too pink for my liking, I chose peach gold on the assumption that it might mellow to a nicer colour than jaundice.

My original plan for Paige, Zihu and Daisy was to make them sisters in the 1920s and 30s. But that idea sucks. I'd feel the need to make three dresses, every time I made one, and they would all be from a very narrow time period. I hadn't even lifted a needle and I was already bored. Idea number two was to assign each doll a year, like American girl. After a few days, that idea sucked too. It would mean there would be lots of stuff I couldn't make. And that would make me want to buy a lot more dolls! In the end, I have decided to assign each doll a fifty year period for her clothes to come from. Zihu can wear anything from 1800 to 1850. Daisy (when she gets here) has been given 1850 to 1900. And Paige has been given 1900 to 1950.

 When I was painting Paige, now to be named Lily, I was trying to focus on making her look both delicate and clever, rather than beautiful. I'm not sure if I succeeded but I'm not unhappy with her, so she'll probably stay as she is for now. I had a couple of issues with her. I really wanted her to keep her hazel eyes. BUT because her eye sockets are so small, she doesn't really work with dark eyes. Unless I shone a lamp directly in her face, cold war interrogation style, her entire eyes looked demonic black, which was not the look I was going for. The other issue with Paige is her head shape. Her head is very narrow at the bottom but quite wide at the top, once you add a wig the effect is amplified, and with the wrong wig she ends up looking like Megamind or some giant brained creature from a 1960s sci fi show! I'm not a hundred percent happy with her current wig, but I'm going to see if I can style it better.

 Zihu, whoe has changed her name to Eleanore. . . or possibly Elizabeth, on the other hand was a delight to work with. Her face up, pretty much painted itself. The only issue I have is that even though she's a doll from Dollmore's Narsha line, and she's wearing a Dollmore Narsha wig, it keeps falling off! I know, I have a silicone head cap for her somewhere, I think I'l have to dig it out for her.

Now to the clothes I've made.
These are not my own patterns. I was too lazy in the end to draft my own, so these have all been made from Antique Lilac's easy kid dress pattern, with lots of changes because I can never leave things alone.

This first dress was originally made for Eleanore (Elizabeth?) but unfortunately the Narsha body has gigantic man hands that didn't fit through the sleeves, so ultimately it will probably be given to Claudia. For now, Lily is wearing it.

 It's muslin over cotton sheeting, with machine stitch decoration in white. I chose the machine stitch because I thought it looked like a reasonable alternative to featherstitching, which I did not want to do by hand.

This second outfit was my redo of Eleanore or Elizabeth's dress. It didn't take much to make the pattern work with the Narsha body. It was a simple case of replacing the sleevebands with elastic casing, which I suppose isn't historically accurate but I guess if I really wanted to I could thread ribbon through the casing instead and tie them closed. I don't want to though. The pantaloons are made from an adaptation of Antique Lilac's boy's bathers pattern. And the shawl was adapted from the collar of the easy kid dress.

The shawl has the same fake featherstitching as the other dress. And interesting thing this dress taught me. . . It's made out of a men's dress shirt that was made of a linen like cotton and I discovered that if I turn my iron up to the cotton setting, it scorches my ironing board cover! Who the hell makes an ironing board cover that isn't heatproof?! The shawl isn't quite long enough. I measured carefully to make sure the ends could cross over the chest and meet behind her back. And that's how long I made it. Except it's supposed to tie behind! I'm either going to have to put press studs on the ends or stitch some baby ribbon to the ends that is long enough to tie, if I want this to work.

And random sewing terminology lesson. The tucks on her dress are tucks. The tucks on her pants are pintucks. I see these terms used interchangeably a lot lately. Even on sewing websites. But they're not the same thing at all. A tuck is a pleat in the fabric that is sewn in place. This was usually done so clothes could be let out later as someone grew or gained weight. Or they would be put into hand me down garments to resize them for their new owner. Tucks are functional. Pintucks on the other hand are purely decorative. A pintuck is much narrower, as wide as a pin. Effectively it's as if someone has placed a pin along the fabric, sewn around it, and pulled it out. They stick straight up and there would be no point whatsoever to taking them out.

Finally Lily's 1920s dress.

I don't have much to say about this dress. It's ok. I'm not in love with it. I'm don't dislike it. I don't like the way the skirt hangs in these pictures and other than that I feel very whatever about it.

Now next things. I need more socks and stockings for these girls. Eleanore Elizabeth needs more period appropriate shoes. I'm thinking black ballet flats to start with. Lily just needs ANY shoes that fit! Poor barefoot urchin. Which means Celina and Daisy will need shoes too. I also need to see if I can make Lily's wig look better, less like she has water on the brain.  And when Daisy gets here, if she's doing the second half of the 1800s she's going to need a crinoline and a bustle. I haven't bothered with underwear to much. Eleanore or Elizabeth has her pantaloons. Lily has some french knicker sort of shorts. But I haven't given them period appropriate stays or petticoats, mostly because there is no point to a corset on a doll that doesn't have a soft body. It won't reshape her, it will just add bulk. But the crinoline will be necessary for certain skirt shapes.

I'm planning the crinoline at the minute. I'm not sure what to use for the hoops, I have some ideas but I'm not sure which ones will work or if I'm going to want it to be washable. I also want to avoid my two gigantic pet hates with crinolines. I don't want the bones to show through the dresses and I don't want that too short effect where the dress is longer than the petticoat and so follows a graceful curve to the edge, then drops straight down. So I'm thinking it will have to be multi layer. A cage layer with hoops, a ruffled layer over that to hide the bones and a flannelette layer on top to make it lie smooth. But attatch all three layers to a yoke so it doesn't add too much bulk to the doll.

I also want to make at least two basic guimpes.  Don't ask me how to pronounce that. I've only ever seen the word in print. But from the mid 1800s to the first world war, dress pattern catalogues talk a lot about guimpes. Which is a basic blouse to wear under dresses and pinafores. Some were very simple, like a peasant blouse, some were more elaborate. I want to make one out of lawn and one out of muslin, just so they're there if I need them. Very plain ones though, so they can stand in as needed for anything from the 1850s to the 1910s.

If anyone has any idea on making a crinoline, whether it be what to use for boning or construction ideas, please help! Also is Eleanore or Elizabeth a better name for Zihu? At the moment, I'm calling her Eleanore Elizabeth because I can't decide. I would just name her that but it's too long.