Stephanie & Jocelyn are finally finished!  It has taken awhile to get them done in between all of the other things I had going on! 


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Now the costuming get to be a bit fun.  I love the small details as they add realism to the tiny dolls.


Materials:

• Fine White  Cotton Fabric
• Wonder Under Fusible Webbing
• Aileen's Tacky Glue
• Sharp Scissors
• Red Silk Ribbon & Silk Cord
• Hard lead pencil
• Needle Tool

I had to hand dye the silk cord trim & silk ribbon as I didn't have any in red.  I also dyed some antique trim but as you can see in the photo, it came out a muted shade of red.  It will be perfect for another project, but not this one.


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Here are Stephanie & Jocelyn  Almost dressed.

They still need their fancy red trimmed collars and cuffs as well as knee socks and leather Mary Jane's.  The poor girls will also need their hair combed out and restyled.


I had to make some alterations to the original pattern. When working is such a small scale, sometimes illusion wins out over reality and different techniques must be used to keep things n scale.  The original dresses are very simple and translate to a rather plain finished dress in miniature.  I decided to add some small gathers to give the skirt a nice shape without bulk rather than add the original "tucks" that were eased into the skirt to fit the bodice.  The dress hangs nicely with a nice soft look to the folds rather than looking stiff like it did with the original drafted pattern.
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Now it is time to use the patterns and cut them from fabric.
You will need:

• Aileen's "STOP Fray" or "Tacky Glue"
• Needle Tool
• Extra Sharp Scissors
• Hot iron to press fabric
• Hard lead pencil 

1. Be sure to press your fabric so it is perfectly smooth and wrinkle free
2. Use a hard lead pencil to carefully trace around the pattern onto the wrong side of the fabric.
3. You can double or quadruple the layers of fabric if you need to cut out more than one piece of the same pattern. This way you are only cutting it out one time.
4. Use VERY sharp scissors to carefully cut just inside the line of fabric.  This is done to keep any pencil lines off of the cut out pieces.
5. Use Aileen's "STOP Fray" or Tacky Glue to seal the edges of each piece.  I use a needle tool dipped in the product and go around each edge very carefully. 
6. Lay the sealed pieces on wax paper to dry.
7. Don't skip this step.  It is super important if you want to have a very neat & clean finished costume.

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Stephanie Gets Her Sailor Dress!

The first step is to make a simple pattern for the sailor dress.  I use normal paper to make the initial pattern and then transfer it to card stock to make it sturdy and easy to trace around.

I start by studying the dress in the photo. It is a simple classic & timeless sailor type dress.  It consists of a yoke, slight puff sleeves, a collar & flare skirt that according to the customer is above the knee.  There will also be embellishments of white cuffs on the sleeves, a white insert in the yoke and a red "tie' and red trim.  The Collar will also be white trimmed in red.

You can either lay the doll down on paper and trace around her to get an approximate size and shape of the pattern or you can fold a small piece of paper in half and just "eyeball" the pattern.
I initially make the pattern without the seam allowances and add them in later in the final draft.  You can see in the photo that the length is also longer than needed, but that is not important at this time.



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