Haunted Mansion Tightrope Walker -Part 2, Pattern & Construction

M-P Goes All Crafty - Haunted Mansion Edition Tightrope Walker Cosplay

As well as the 18th century jacket, there's also been ANOTHER little project I've been working on - I finished the main body of it today, so you're going to have to listen to me babble about it!

Matilda, 1830s Mode: Mini-Gown Extravaganza Part 2

Hello again, folks! More Romantic era doll costumes here as promised! There weren’t quite as many as I remembered - I began to branch out into other time periods around this time as I found more patterns, but I got a lot of use out of the Pemberley Threads patterns. 

Let’s kick things off with an autumnal scene! (my taking SHAMELESS advantage of the American Girl Samantha Gazebo before my mother sold it on, basically) and strewing plastic pumpkins and fake autumn leaves everywhere. Also present, Felicity’s nightcap masquerading as an 1830s day bonnet. 

The brown cotton day dress was my first attempt at the ‘Molly’ pattern, and I made the sleeves a little too tight; it was a strain to get them over the wrists! Plus, the neckline was a little gappy from what I remember. I took a pattern from American Girl Addy’s knitted heartwarmer to make a little tie-around muslin fichu for Matilda to disguise my bad sewing (accessories, folks - don’t underestimjate their power!) and with the scraps left over from her blue nightgown managed to eke out a teeny little doll apron. Matilda looks ready to help with the harvest festival - and I was pretty relieved some of my early mistakes didn’t show...

The little collar here was actual experimentation, as opposed to ‘argh, I made mistakes! HIDE THE EVIDENCE!’

I’ve long really loved the look of the mini capes and pelerines the 1830s are famed for,  so I took inspiration from fashion plates like the one below and made a little matching cape in the same dress fabric to set it off. The fancy buckle is a cheap plastic ‘bridal’ buckle you can buy at any craft shop for floral arrangements/wedding decoration. They’re just the right size for a doll sash./// 

This final 1830s dress is the simplest - but it’s also the one I’m most proud of, because I’d practiced enough with the pattern so I could put it together really well. And I was incredibly lucky with the fabric - it was a fine shot blue/pink cotton by a patchwork/quilting designer called Kaffe Fassett, and it looks beautiful under light - it has this iridescent sheen that just makes it wonderful.

I didn’t bother with trims or lace for this one - I let the fabric speak for itself in its simplicity, and just added a violet sash to pick out the soft pink lurking in the weave. And Matilda photographed so well in it!

Even in a more subdued light, it’s still a wonderful bluebell colour with a hint of violet/purple in the depths....

The Historic Mini-Gown Extravaganza! Matilda,1830s Mode

Hello again folks! Building on my ‘A Girl for All Time’ fanpost from last time, just thought I’d share a few pictures of some of the little dresses and accessories I’ve made over the years!

First off, my very first A Girl for All Time Doll purchase: Matilda.

Matilda was the first doll in the range - and for a long time she was the only one you could get your hands on, as the the later version sold out so fast! These days it tends to be the other way around, and she’s only available through scouring the second-hand dolls on Ebay.

Now, I love Matilda, because she has this lovely, still little “listening” expression on her face!  She’s not vacuous-looking or conventionally gorgeous - she’s got a quiet dignity about her that I just adore. Thought I’ve never really thought of her as being Tudor, even though that’s the way she’s marketed. She reminds me of a young Queen Victoria more: or maybe Jane Eyre or Beth from Little Women...

And as there were some lovely 1830s patterns released from PemberleyThreads... well... this happened:

She just looked so 1830s it was almost unreal! So, in a twinkling, Matilda the young Tudor lady-in-waiting time-travelled forward a couple of hundred years to become Miss Matilda, an elegant young lady from the Romantic era...

This was the very first gown I made her, out of some IKEA cotton voile curtain scraps! I wanted to recreate the airy, diaphanous look of the muslin gowns of the period. I accentuated it with some delicate crochet lace at the hem and neckline, and lightly tacked on some little blue paper flowers at the bodice for decoration.  I used the PemberleyThreads ‘Victoria’ Pattern’ which was a dream to sew up.

After that, I created a little grey plaid cotton long-sleeved dress for daywear. Here Matilda is definitely channelling the delicate Beth ‘I must keep to the house until spring comes, due to my delicate health!’ look. I added bias binding ‘ribbons’ to her shoulders in the same colour as her sash to make the gown just a little less plain.

Here she’s showing off her Shakespeare collection, which was a great find on EBay , as they were perfectly sized for her! These are just cheap miniature novelty gift-shop items from Stratford-Upon-Avon, but they look great as books for dolls - or even just as props in a scene or background photo.

(The keen-eyed American Girl fan will recognise Rebecca’s shawl and Felicity’s backdrop in the picture here My mother was an avid AG collector for a while and I freely piggybacked her collection for the benefit of my 16 inch dolls, as they fit into it just as well...)

And here we have a little historical dressing gown I made for Matilda out of blue-plaid cotton - scraps left over from an old re-enactment apron. This is actually the Pemberly Threads Clara Nightgown pattern - just worn back-to-front without the back sewn up to form a loose dressing robe - a quick sewing hack, but it turned out well and made a mighty fine dressing gown for Matilda to wear over her nightgown (her own, as well as the little nightcap)

Well, that’s all the pictures Tumblr will let me post this time round! Stay tuned for 1830s mode part 2...