The Claudia Project Part One

 Yes! We’re still under lockdown, the Giant Baby is even more insanely clingy than usual, and we’re weaning Tiny from bottles for the second time. You know what that means! Time for a long and ridiculously complicated project! Yay!

 Ok, not exactly. I fully expect this project to take years, because I want to wait until I find the perfect fabric for each dress. And I’m starting now, because I got the eyes that I ordered for Claudia, and I want to paint her face so I can get a better idea of how well they fit, so I know if I need to get other eyes instead. But if I’m going to paint her, I want to have an outfit ready to go, because once they have faces, I feel bad for nude dolls.

 If you don’t know, Claudia, is a child vampire character in the book and movie “Interview with the vampire”. My doll will be an amalgam of the book character and the movie character. I plan on trying to recreate the costumes from the movie but also clothes from descriptions in the book and probably some stuff, I will make up because I can.

 So far Claudia’s head looks like this

She still needs eyelashes and eyebrows. I’m a bit nervous about her shading otherwise. It’s very subtle, which makes me worry it’s too subtle. But I’ve mostly used purples instead of my usual peachy browny colours, because I thought it would make her look paler and more unworldly. So I’m trying to keep it subtle, otherwise she may end up looking like she’s smashed her face into a 1980s eyeshadow palette! Trying to hit that perfect point between too subtle and laughable is difficult.

And this is the outfit that I plan on making first.

Yes. That is one terrible screenshot. But (and I suspect this will be an ongoing problem) for a film that was filmed in the dark (more or less), nearly 30 years ago, this was the best I could do for a full length pic. It also doesn’t help that the colours look completely different, depending on what screen I’m watching on, and I suspect a lot of shot silk was used. So I broke it down into details.

The sleeves are sheer and the skirt has an overlay of the same sheer fabric, with gold lines  and dots worked on it. You may remember (if  I remembered to post about it) that I painted this design on some sheer fabric,  when I was first expecting my Iplehouse girls.

  The bodice is satiny with a gold “brocade” pattern. I have heaps os satin this  colour so that’s ok. But I’m not going to embroider it. I don’t think that would work on this small scale but also I don’t think that is embroidery. The “embroidery” has artefacts around it,  and they don’t change from shot to shot. I suspect this is silk  screened. I know some of the men’s “embroidered” waistcoats were silk screened, so that makes sense. But I think the pattern may be too small and delicate for my silk screening kit, so I might try hand painting it onto the fabric.

 She’ll also need straight, white pants. With two wide stripes of lace around the hem. It looks like the lace was edged with blue, baby, ribbon at the top edge. I might try to get the same effect with machine top stitching. Or if that doesn’t work, maybe chain stitched embroidery thread?

And even though she’s barefoot in this picture, I want her to have white stockings and blue satin slippers. Guess what? I’m going to need to work out how to make doll shoes. Yep. I keep hearing that YOSD shoes fit Iplehouse KIDs. They don’t really. Boots and high top sneakers look ok. But really, all the YOSD shoes that I’ve tried are fairly square, which means they look much to wide for these dolls feet. Even with socks. I bought some white satin slippers designed for Tyler Wentworth, thinking perhaps I could dye them. But they are about a millimetre too small. So close that I considered stretching them. But I couldn’t work out how,  and then realised that once I’d stretched  them they would  need to be stretched to go over stockings as well! That would be a lot  of stretch for a tiny,  wee, shoe! It’s probably best that I stop being scared and lazy, and just learn to make simple shoes, in the right colour, that fit.

The big trouble I’m having with this design is the embroidery on the bottom of the skirt. There’s some sort of gold embroidery or beading or something around the bottom edge of the overskirt. That’s easy enough with a narrow, rolled hem in gold thread. But abouve that there is some kind of scrolly, flowery pattern. And I cannot tell what it is.

A new winner of the worst screenshot ever award. And it’s the best I can find. A friend bet she could find a better picture and two hours later, had to concede that she couldn’t. I suppose I have to do the best I can with this picture. And at least, if this is the best picture, I can pretty much use any design that I damn well like. Nobody can say it’s wrong, because nobody else can see what it is either.

Just for funsies, this is the working sketch I made up on Procreate. I’m fairly new to Procreate, and this is one of the first things I’ve tried to colour in it, so while it’s not great, it’s definitely ok.

I had better get to work.