Lydia's Starlight Dress

Lydia (Helen Kish's Peyton) with her Zelf friend.

I wanted something spangley and sparkly for Lydia's first outfit as a girl. Something partyish and pretty. What I came up with was a fairly basic design. A simple dress with a round neckline, high waist, puffed sleeves, and full skirt. I added a sheer overskirt and attatched half-sash to make it a little more interesting.

The result:

It may be the pale blue or the long hair with the headband but

the overall look feels a little Alice in Wonderlandish to me.

The sleeves and bodice are actually made from a pair of sequined gloves I found at a junk shop, with the sequins scrubbed off. The bodice is lined in pale blue cotton/poly and the underskirt is of the same fabric. The overskirt is Ivory Crystal Organza with pale blue stitching at the hem. There's also a half sash of blue nylon tying at the back.

I couldn't get a good picture of the sash, so here's a bad one.

This close up you can see where the sequins were, that's not going to wash out.

To make this is simple.

Make up the bodice and bodice lining, if  you're using a lining.

Sew the ends of the sash (If you want one) into the side seams of the bodice.

Sew a casing along the lower edge of each sleeve and thread with hat elastic. (Shirring elastic isn't strong enough and normal elastic is too bulky.)

Gather the overskirt (If you want one) onto the underskirt.

Gather both layers of skirt onto the bodice and sew the back seam.

Add fastenings.

It can be fun experimenting with different sheer fabrics over different fabrics. You don't have to make it white over a colour, or make both layers the same colour. Two different colours can give interesting effects, but check what they look like together before doing all the work.

And now the rest of this post is mainly going to be Lydia/Peyton photo spam.

Her hair is really WAY too long, but I can't decide whether to cut it or curl it, so I'm leaving it until I make up my mind. (Although I did discover long pigtails really don't suit her.)

Lydia (Helen Kish Peyton) looking cute, just before she did a nose-dive

off the table!

It actually wasn't until I saw these pictures that I realized

 how much the blue of her dress brought out her eyes.

Making a wish on a falling star.

 Lydia (Helen Kish Peyton) with her new friend.

 And now the pattern:

Until next time.

Rewigging Peyton

I finally got around to rewigging Peyton today (YAY!), and I'm going to show you how I did it just in case you ever want to rewig one of your dolls.
Before I start I will say, particularly if you've never done this before DON'T DO IT UNLESS YOU'RE SURE YOU WANT TO! Seriously. There's a good chance you will ruin the original wig in the process and even if you don't, it may never be quite the same again. Don't take the wigs off unless you know you won't be heartbroken if the original wig ends up unusable!
I don't recommend using any kind of solvents on vinyl. Why? Because a lot of vinyls will absorb solvents, and whilst there may be no visible effects at the time, often  they will cause the vinyl to degrade faster than it otherwise would. So if I'm not sure I don't use it.
I also don't recommend using craft knives to cut away the glue. It's tempting, but there's also a very realistic danger of slipping and ending up with the blade buried in the doll's face, or your hand.

I use a teaspoon. Yep, a teaspoon. Not solvents, no water, no knives. Just a teaspoon. And it takes about twenty minutes.
Start by looking around the edge of the wig. Usually somewhere toward the back you'll see a loose spot.

Slowly (this is the slowest part) work the teaspoon under the loose spot.

Once you can get the tip of the teaspoon under the edge, start working it around to either side.

Getting to the point in the above photo is the slowest part. Once you're that far just keep going and soon you'll be here :

And once you're that far you can usually just pull the wig off.
And then you have this:

Just for fun once I had my bald Peyton, I tried on all the wigs I had on hand (three) and here are the results:

Brunette Peyton with a fringe that was apparently cut with a lawn mower.

Wig is Dark Brown Dani wig by Monique in size 6-7

Blonde Peyton. I can't decide if I love this look or hate it.

Wig is Luts wig CDW-21 in Sweety Gold in size 6-7

And of course red head Peyton. I know I love this!

Wig is Luts wig CDW-21 in Carrot in size 6-7

The next part is attaching the wig. I don't normally do this part. My Lark has been rewigged but because her wig is a size 6-6.5 it's very snug, so it can be styled and fiddled with, without any danger of falling off. This wig is a little bigger, and Peyton's head is a little smaller, so I decided to glue it down.

Firstly make sure you have a clean work surface and a damp cloth handy.

Then plait or bundle up the hair and turning the wig-cap inside out, stuff the hair inside.

This makes it easier to see what you're doing, and stops the hair from getting stuck under the wig, or getting glue in it.

Now put glue on the doll's head, not the wig. I used ordinary PVA. I wouldn't expect it to hold up to a child playing with a doll, but for my doll which won't be played with and will only be getting occasional gentle styling, it shouldn't matter. 

Don't be overly heavy handed with the glue. If you use too much it will seep through the wig cap and make a mess of the hair.

Next spread the glue over the doll's head with your finger.

Wipe away any excess with a damp cloth and clean your fingers before you put the wig on.

Position the wig by putting the front hairline where you want it and then working around to the rest of the wig.

Her hair is still tied back, now she is drying on a shelf. Make sure it's some where nobody is going to pick her up or knock her over until she's dry.

Once her wig has dried, I'll be making her a new dress. A girly, sparkly, party dress.

Peyton as a girl - sort of

Just for fun, I dressed Peyton in a Living Dead Doll dress, and a pair of Dollmore Dear Doll shoes as a sort of preview of Peyton as a girl. Haven't rewigged him/her yet.

Helen Kish's Peyton

Helen Kish's Peyton

 When I bought my first Chrysalis doll, the two dolls I was choosing between were Olivia Primavera and Waterfall Fantasy Wren. In the end I chose Wren, and decided I would only buy the fourteen inch dolls. Two sizes would be too much. Too many outfits to make. Too many shoes to buy. This is the little face that changed my mind about my one size only policy. Another doll I had to have.

 

 Straight out of the box Peyton is adorable! I don't usually like dolls with open mouthed smiles. All to often they look simpering of false like a child beauty queen. But Peyton's smile doesn't look false, he actually looks like a little kid having fun. He looks like he'd be cheeky and get up to mischief, probably by accident. He looks like he has a personality.

YAY! I've finally arrived!

 It doesn't show very well in the photos but his black stretch pants have a little pintuck up the centre front and back, like real ones often do. This is a nice touch, but does mean you need to take a little more care when posing him. You can't see the joints so you're working blind and then once you've got him how you want him, you have to rearrange the tucks so they're straight - without changing his pose! It's a little tricky but not a huge pain in the neck. Also the waist is elastic so there are no tricky little fastenings to fiddle with or add extra bulk.

 If I'm standing side on, nobody will notice if my tucks are straight or not.

 The sweater is adorable! It's made of a knit fabric without any fleece on the inside, with yellow knit cuffs that are lightly ribbed. The penguin on the front is machine embroidered and nearly as cute as Peyton himself.

 

And in the back it fastens with an invisible zip instead of the snaps that all my other Chrysalis dolls' clothes have. There's also a little hook and eye at the neckline. That doesn't really show in the picture.

There isn't anything under his sweater, not that I expected there to be. Under his trousers he wears white knit underpants with picot trim along the waist and plain bound legholes. He also has a pair of white ribbed socks, that come to mid-calf if you put his heels where the shaping for his heels is. I say it that way because the feet are too big for his feet, I think they'd fit the 14" dolls better; and if you put his toes in the toes of the socks, they come up to his knees.

In a little plastic bag taped to the side of Peyton's box are his accessories.

Peyton's mittens hat and scarf.

They're all nicely made out of  knit fabric. But I took one look at the mittens and almost had a panic attack! The 12" dolls have quite splayed hands, not as bad as a kewpie doll, but certainly not something I wanted to have to put tiny little mittens onto!

NOT something I want to have to force into a tiny little mitten!

Actually I shouldn't have worried, I can now say from experience that getting the mittens on is easy as pie! . . . getting them off made me worry I was going to rip his hand off.

 Anyway here's Peyton in his full outfit

I prefer it when the scarf doesn't cover up the penguin.

 He looks amazing but I found I kept trying to keep the tassel behind him, because it's a little out of scale

Fear my giant tassel of doom!

His shoes, I have to say, are fantastic! I know they just look like black blobs in my pictures but that's my incompetence not the boots! These are great. 

They're made of a black velvety fabric with a coppery overprint, sort of like a snakeskin, that varies in it's intensity. In some places it's a bright copper with a very clear pattern, in other places it's barely there. The soles are black plastic with molded tread, the molding is on the sides and the backs as well.

 They fasten with laces (baby ribbon) but the little strap across the top velcros in place too. And they're lined with thin black vinyl. (Possibly this is just the backing to the fabric they're made from.)

The main concern I had before I got this doll was his face. In the prototype pictures both Peyton and Piper have eyes a shade of icy blue that I was worried would be quite creepy in real life, like something from "Children of the damned". I was also a tiny bit concerned that on the actual dolls the freckles would be darker, bigger or just plain blotchy. I shouldn't have worried. The actual dolls eyes are a lovely colour. A light greyish blue with a faint touch of lavender and the freckles are beautifully and delicately painted. Actually after being worried that the freckles would be too obvious, I'm now a little disappointed that they're not more obvious. As I write this Peyton is sitting on my printer, arms length away and I can see the freckles on his nose - just, and I wouldn't see the ones on his cheeks at all if I didn't already know they were there. I will qualify that statement though by pointing out that my eyesight is absolutely rubbish.

I love Peyton and if it wasn't for the fact that I find sewing for boys incredibly boring (I can only make so many pairs of jeans and t-shirts before I will be forced to eat my own head from boredom) I would probably keep him as a boy. But I have other plans for this little lad. Over the next week or so he is going to be transformed into a girl! . . . That sounds more dramatic that it is, I'm going to rewig him and stick him in a dress. You could probably turn him into a girl without rewigging him but for some reason (and I really can't explain this) I really don't like bobbed hair on children. Actually with his current haircut he would make a great period girl from the 1930's or 1940's.

There may be a bit of delay in posts over the next month or so. I have almost no free time coming up and my entire household is already complaining they haven't got enough of my attention lately, but before you start thinking I'm neglecting real children to sew for dolls I will point out that the youngest person in my house is 26. 

My next post which will go up sometime in the next week will show Peyton's rewigging.

Arden's Gatsby Smock Dress

Arden (Kish Olivia) with her Heidi Ott doll.

 This is my first dress for the twelve inch dolls. 

Please excuse the clumsy hem. With every dress I make, I swear that I will make the next one with the sewing machine but for some reason I keep making them all by hand which does tend to result in slightly ugly hems.

For some reason the Olivia sculpt, combined with the cloud of blonde hair makes me think of more decadent times, so I wanted to do something period in lush fabric. I suspect you might be seeing this particular doll in a lot of period or character outfits on this blog. 

A short 1920s style smock dress, that I made in some kind of synthetic velvet. (One of the problems with using found fabrics is that you rarely know exactly what you're working with.) The yoke is very shallow and the skirt is very short. Lengthening the skirt, if you want to, shouldn't be too hard. Luckily the lace I chose to trim the dress almost exactly matches the underpants Olivia Primavera comes in, so even if her skirt rides up, her pants at least match.

Arden demonstrates why a lot of older people refer to this 

style of dress as a "Pantie Dress"

Start by lining the yoke pieces, if you're using velvet or thick fabric, line with a thin cotton, taffeta or lining fabric. Sew the fabrics together along the neckline and back opening, turn in the right way, if using lace, tack in place now. Then turn under raw edges along sleeve edges and sew together.

Gather the skirt pieces onto the yoke pieces.

Sew the side seams and hem the armhole edges on the skirt.

Hem the skirt and back edges. 

And finish back opening.

Lastly add a trim to the yoke, if you like. I'm not happy with the trim on this dress, but the trim I wanted, I couldn't find anywhere! I wanted little silk flowers that usually when I'm looking for trims, every shop I go to has. This time when I was actually looking for them, the only ones I could find were apple green.

Arden hopes nobody can tell that her headband is actually a bracelet!

 You look upwards a lot when your dress is trimmed with a rosette as big as your head.

 All we need now is a voice to whisper something completely random in french. . . um. . .  "Fenetre"

and Arden can have her own perfume advertisement!

Arden gives me puppy eyes in the hopes I won't put the 

little doll back in the dollhouse.

 

High Flying Raven

High Flying Raven in her full outfit.

This is a doll I have unexpectedly fallen in love with. I wasn't even going to buy a Raven. But I did and now I love her!

I'll start from the begining. 

I have loved Helen Kish's dolls since the 1990's. I remember making paper doll versions of her ballerinas in blue and white

                                                                                   

The girl in the foreground was my favourite.

In those days, I was a teenager and not a lot of dolls were available where I live, (and ordering things internationally was a lot more complicated than it is now) so I never even dreamed of owning the dolls I saw in magazines. Although in 1998 I actually wrote off to a shop in America to find out how much it would cost to buy the porcelain Bonnie doll, when I got the reply I was crushed and shocked.

  Helen Kish's Bonnie from 1998

 I haven't kept up with what's going on in the doll world for the last few years, so I didn't even know about the Chrysalis dolls. Last time I was paying attention Riley had only just been introduced and I was only just paying attention then, the last time dolls had my full attention Bethany was only just getting started.

Earlier this year I decided to buy myself a doll, initially I planned on getting one of Dianna Effner's vinyl dolls which I was vaguely aware of, but I was a bit disappointed by their lack of articulation and a bit scared by their price. (I had only seen the studio dolls, not the Heartstrings ones which are a lot more affordable.) And at some point I stumbled across the Chrysalis line. I had to have one! I was enchanted!

But not by Raven. 

I'm not going to say I disliked Raven, I didn't. I just didn't like her either. The other Chrysalis girls I saw and wanted, Raven I simply overlooked as uninteresting. I was actually confused by this. As far as I can see, of the Chrysalis dolls Raven's is the most quintessentially Kish face, and I love Kish dolls. But not Raven.

In the end I (obviously) bought High Flying Raven. Why? She was on sale, I loved her outfit and I planned on using her body to fit patterns for the other dolls. She was never going to get to wear the finished clothes. 

When she arrived I was madly in love with my Lark, Raven was deboxed, placed on a shelf next to Lark and forgotten.

It was two weeks before I finally took Raven down to have a look at her. I got her hood and goggles out of her box and spent a frustrating fifteen minutes putting them on her. I love the little hood and the fact that it's lined with a sheepskin type fabric and that the lining isn't just around the edges but all through it. The body of her little jacket is lined too (not in sheepskin, just cotton) which always impresses me with dolls clothes.

Raven's little hood, goggles and jacket.

I took her jacket off to see what the dress underneath looked like and it is really lovely! All little pink ruffles. I don't like pink but it does really suit her colouring. Of course I had to change her shoes to see the dress as a dress. Spent five minutes trying to unlace her boots before I realised they unzipped down the back and felt a bit silly.

Raven's boots and socks

A change of shoes changes Raven's look completely

(Shoes are MSD shoes from Alice's Collections)

And her face is just beautiful. She reminds me of my sister when she was a child, and of an old Bru doll. . . which isn't overly surprising since the bru faces have always reminded me of my sister as a child too. Actually I've half got a thought to buy the palest Raven I can find and rewig and redress her like and antique doll.

  The kind of face I'm talking about.

 Raven all pink and sweet.

And now Raven has gone from a doll I never expected to like, to one of my favourite dolls ever! I find that strange about these dolls. I'm probably going to sound like a crazy person but they have an amazing amount of personality. I've discovered I can't name them before I get them, or more often than not I get them and they just don't accept the name I give them. 

My Raven was initially going to be named Briarlee, but firstly I discovered I can't say Briarlee without it sounding like Briley and even when I said it right, Raven just looked at me as though she was thinking "That's not my name." 

I call her Rowan now, I have no idea how that came about because I was calling her Rowan for about a week before I even realised I was! Since my rule with dolls is that if you change their name and a week later you're still calling them by their factory name, the name you've given them is wrong, I've decided it works the other way too. If you find you've been calling them something that isn't their name for a week without realising it, that probably is their name.

The other thing I am finding with the Chrysalis dolls is that I'm giving them back stories and personalities in my head which is something I haven't done with any doll since I was about twelve years old. They really do take on a life of their own! And I really love the different looks Raven has. In her full original outfit, I think she looks quite cheeky, but if you change her down to just her dress suddenly she's very demure and sweet.

And finally some more pictures of Raven, just because I can.

 Raven in her full outfit and goggles

Raven in her full outfit with her goggles up.

Raven in her full outfit but without the hood and goggles.