Can you believe I made this with a crochet hook? And then spent hours and hours and hours taking pictures and writing a tutorial? And then more time redoing parts of it after compatibility problems between my two word processing programs?
If you, like me, are stuck inside because of blizzard-like weather, click here and then curl up on the couch with some tea and start a new doll sweater. It’s very long, so part 2 is coming next week. Enjoy!!
If there is one look that says “perfect dress for a little girl” it’s this. Penelope used last week’s bodice and added a peter pan collar and short, puffy sleeves. This was the iconic silhouette for girls’ dresses throughout the 1950s, and just about any catalog, paperdoll set, etc. will give you plenty of great ideas to dress this up with different kinds of trim. It was often covered with a pinafore…maybe she can find one of those for next week?
Download the bonus pattern pieces here
Note that it was done a little differently than usual – please check to make sure the inch box measures correctly when you print!!
Welcome, Claudie and Happy Equinox!
I’m going to try to start blogging a little more regularly again and am hoping Claudie becomes a catalyst for that.
Claudie is so adorable! My first thought was that they had used the Makena facemold, but after seeing both side by side, Claudie’s eyes are smaller and her head seems a little wider. I like the darker skin and lip tones that they chose but, you will notice below that my Claudie looks a little different from the factory version…
I was more or less OK with the extra face paint on the World By Us dolls because they’re meant to be a little older, although don’t get me started on my makeup rant. Even if I liked the lower eyelashes on Claudie though, the fact that the paint is shiny means it can look weird in a photo. For example, my first photo of her was this:
You can see the lower lashes fine on one eye, but there’s a reflection shining off them in the other eye that looks unnatural. I originally planned on removing both top and bottom lashes, but after my husband removed the lower lashes, all of a sudden I went from “Yeah, Claudie’s cute” to “Oh wow, is she ever adorable! I love her so much!” So the top lashes stayed.
The more pictures I take of her, the more photogenic I feel she is! There’s one bad angle where her eyes can look a little uneven, but for the most part, I love this facemold and hope they use it again!
Her wig is what I’ll call “delicate.” One curl pulled completely out of place while I was dressing her, and wouldn’t curl back up into place, and another in the back seems to have succumbed to gravity while she was just in a stand. AG wig quality is usually good, so I hope it’s the case that there was just some issue with this particular wig.
To celebrate Claudie and the equinox, your gift this week is a free pattern for a really cute dress based on an actual 1920s doll dress
After all that happy sunshine, autumn arrived here this week with fog, rain, and much colder temperatures, so she’s going to need warmer things soon! Some are already made, let’s hope I stay motivated to keep posting them here! 🙂
PS: I was informed (Thank you, Sophie!) that the waistband measurement was missing from this dress in the summer sew along – that’s been fixed!
What a busy couple of weeks it’s been! I am so thankful that today begins a week of Thanksgiving Break! To celebrate that, here is the final pattern in our Nancy Trousseau/A-line Series. Nancy had kind of a surprising number of coats, even at the very beginning of her wardrobe. The white one that came with the trousseau set was also sold separately as “Noche de estreno,” and then she had an animal-print faux-fur one called “En las carreras,” another plain light brown faux-fur called “Días de frío” and finally, a really cute raincoat called “Bajo la lluvia” or just “Lluvia.” You could use this basic pattern to make any of Nancy’s faux-fur coats, or check out some of the really fun fabrics available now in wild prints and colors that are so soft you just can’t stop petting them! 😊 For best results choose a furry fabric on the thin side, mine pictured here was about the thickness of a heavyweight fleece…which would also be a great option for a sportier version of this jacket and could be hemmed instead of lined.
Lottie has been really busy in my imagination, although sadly I can’t figure out a way to get those images onto the blog LOL. So, to relax, she is staying at a ryokan at an onsen this week. Ryokan are traditional Japanese inns and onsen are hot springs. They are popular weekend destinations for the Japanese, and a “must-do” for tourists. Depending what your price range is (we’re assuming Lottie’s budget is unlimited for this fake-cation 😊) you can bathe in the hot spring and then retire to your private room to have a multi-course Japanese meal served to you at a low table in your tatami room. At bedtime, staff will even come to lay out your futon for you. These places traditionally provide a yukata (unlined, informal kimono) for guests to wear to sleep and walk to and from the hot springs. At hot springs, these are worn with a simple tie like a western bathrobe, instead of the more formal obi – see a guide here: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2029_dress.html I did baste in a fold at the waist, which is done for kimono because the fold helps it to hang better, but you could eliminate that and hem shorter instead.
I LOVE when you send me pix of stuff you’ve made or link to your pix in the comments so everyone can see! My latest favorite pic is Anna’s gorgeous quilt pictured below:
She combined the looks of boro and sashiko to give her Lotties the perfect picnic quilt.
A while back, Brenda sent me this adorable pic:
She used the machine smocking designs from this collection. If you don’t have an embroidery machine, you can use the guidelines in today’s tutorial to smock by hand if you know how, or there are mock-smocking directions in this pattern which, incidentally, will also provide you with a sloper to use for drafting your own version for whatever size doll you’d like
Hello everyone! Here’s my first post from Japan! We are living in Mie prefecture with the Hasegawa family while mom helps them get certified as an organic tea farm. Just like our family, the Hasegawas also have two daughters near the ages of my sister Della and I and also one older brother. Tomorrow I’ll be starting school with Yuki. She writes it like this: 雪 isn’t that pretty? Maybe I’ll learn a new way to write my name too?
Love, Bex
BTW Here’s a pic of me in my new uniform:
Skirt shown is from this costume, although I plan to make it again in plaid.
The problem with the Animators is that once you buy one, you can’t stop! This is Elena, who seems to have a less cartoon-y face than Lilo, but an adorable expression with one slightly lifted eyebrow. My Elena came in a cute dress whose cut reminded me of some traditional Mexican dance dresses. They have very full skirts with ruffles along the bottom and watching a group of dancers twirl so the colorful, ribbon-covered skirts billow out is a beautiful sight! Children’s dresses are often less complicated than adults’, with a simpler top that looks similar to this one. The construction of the “real thing” would probably use elastic at the top for more ease of movement, (for example, Simplicity 3863) but I avoid it on doll clothes whenever possible because a) it will eventually stretch out and all your hard work will be wasted and b) dolls generally don’t need much ease for movement added to their clothes unless maybe they’re the Raggedy Ann dolls from the Johnny Gruelle books that “come to life” and run around having adventures as soon as people are gone. 😉
I’m hoping to be back with a new set of historical patterns in time for Esty’s Labor Day sale – fingers crossed!
Yay, it’s time for the summer sew-along! If you’re new to the blog, this is an event to motivate you to complete a mini wardrobe on a theme for your doll by sewing one garment each week. This year it’s an Edwardian summer wardrobe AND a bunch of accessories, mostly sewn, some crafty!
Here’s how it will work:
Each week’s sewing pattern will be posted on Thursday – make sure to get it that day! Most of these can be easily shrunken for 13-14″ dolls like Hearts for Hearts and Cheries by copying the slim size at 77% and you’re welcome to do that if you don’t have any 16″ dolls like AGAT, Sasha, etc. If you miss a week, the patterns and their associated accessory will be available in AG and AGAT sizes on Etsy afterwards.
Sew along each week and post pix of what you made. Get inspired and comment on others’ photos here. Note that I sometimes like to share your pix from there on the blog, so make sure to have sharing turned on/off if you do/don’t want that to happen. Complete each week’s outfit and get the related accessories pattern free, complete all the weeks and get the bonus sewing/accessory pattern!
Today is the winter solstice and the end of our retro Christmas series!
The last installment of the 1950s Christmas pattern was supposed to be a sock doll and dress. I debated for a while about the sock doll – it certainly seems possible to cut up a doll sock and turn it into a doll’s sock doll, but good ones are hard to come by and I hated to sacrifice a good doll sock. It also meant asking you to hunt down the same one I had and cut it up, all to make a doll that, honestly, I just don’t find to be that cute.
Instead, I made a pattern for a dress similar to the one the sock doll is wearing and you can put on a doll for your doll, like a Lottie and probably a mini AG/OG although I’m too tired to go hunt one of those down to check at the moment! Those dolls will fit in the stocking from last week, and in case you’ve missed them, here are all the other retro Christmas pattern links:
https://jenwrenne.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/we-wish-you-a-retro-christmas-part-3/
https://jenwrenne.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/we-wish-you-a-retro-christmas-part-2/
https://jenwrenne.wordpress.com/2017/11/23/we-wish-you-a-retro-christmas/
Wren*Feathers 
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