Renaissance Inspired Cinderella Gown for a doll, part 4: The Drama Queen

The first three posts of this gown you'll find under the label Disney Style Renaissance Inspired Cinderella Gown. The first post was about sewing the dress, the second was about the shift and in the third was photos of finished gown without a doll. This post is maybe a bit more about Flavia The Drama Queen than about the gown itself.

 She is such a theatrical girl! (Sleeves with organza ribbon.)

Ok, Flavia, this is maybe a bit too much.

 I'm happy that I finally got silk ribbon for the sleeves.

Now that Flavia has done so much theatrical posing she feels that she is able to do some neutral poses to present the gown.

And here we are again. Although this is quite moderate theatricality. (She is quoting Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, I guess.)

 P. S. Did I tell you why it's a Cinderella gown? Well, of course because it's blue.

Renaissance Inspired Cinderella Gown for a doll, part 2: the chemise

(Previous post was about making the gown for this outfit.)

I just love doll undergarments made from white cotton. They look always so crisp.

Sleeves must be a bit overlong because of oversleeves. You know, Renaissance sleeves. White poofs coming between lacing. Oh dear, I cant say it better in English.

Back (as you can see).

This cotton lace is beautiful!

Crisp!

Lace!

Sorry! Lace again!

And one with socks!

This is the last one! With not-so-renaissance shoes! I think Flavia looks cool here.

Renaissance Inspired Cinderella Gown for a doll, part 1: sewing the gown

When Flavia (a Helen Kish doll) arrived, I decided immediately to sew her a Cinderella gown. And not any Cinderella gown, but a Disney Style Renaissance Inspired Cinderella Gown. I wanted to recreate this:

It's not a triumph of sewing skills, but it's one of my favourite, because it's one of my (rare) impulsive sewing projects. I remember that I was a bit down and decided to help myself with a sewingtherapy. I wanted to make something bling-bling in Disney princess style. I sewed the dress very quickly from materials I had at hand and did it without patterns and made all choices spontaneously. It was an accident that finished dress looked a bit like Renaissance gown. Because it was blue, it was of course Cinderella's dress. So. I named it Disney Style Renaissance Inspired Cinderella Gown :D

And now. Pictures about making Flavia's gown.

As you can see, the bodice pattern is Very Simple. First I sewed a golden net (yes, I know, of course it's not golden) and then added tiny pearls (yes, not pearls).

 (Very first thing to do was a chemise. I'll post pictures of it later.) Here is going on some fitting.

Next thing was to make tiny rings for attaching sleeves to the bodice. I sewed rings onto shoulder hem.

 Then some ribbon. As you can see, the tiny rings are hiding there on shoulders.

 Closeup.

And fitting just for fun.

 It looks a dress already!

But there is still lot to do.

Like gold thread and pearl embroidery (yes, again, not gold  and pearls). After embroidering I sewed a lining on this front part of skirt.

 If you look carefully, you can see that at this point I have sewed ribbon also to the waist.

This picture is here because Astrid is so CUTE.

And finally, the sleeves. I sewed lining on them. And attached tinyt rings on the shoulder-end of the sleeves.

Here you are! Two Cinderella's Renaissance Inspired Gowns!

P. S. There will be plenty of more pictures of the finished gown in an other post!

Cinderella rags for a doll means a lot of dyeing and washing

Part 1. Cinderella's shift.

Princesses in rags have always holded a special place in my heart. The queen of rags is of course Cinderella (Snow White holds the second place). About thirty years I have been thinking of sewing Cinderella rags for a doll.  And now, after all that thinking, I'm finally sewing them. And it's fun!

You must always use every opportunity to draw Cinderella with rags. That is a rule. So it would have been illegal to begin to sew this oufit without drawing it first. (I may have drawn more rags than ball gowns!)

After drawing I chose the fabrics and made a test dyeing with tea.

Then I coloured my Cinderella drawing. (This is a detail from a scrapbook spread. Here you can see the whole picture which includes some cats and an other Cinderella figure.) After colouring the drawing, some viruses and bacteria decided that after 30 years of planning I'm progressing too fast. So I had a three weeks break from the project. Instead of sewing I used my time coughing and blowing.

After viruses had said goodbye, I begin to dye the fabric for Cinderella's shift. After dyeing I washed it properly (three times!), because I don't want to take any risk that the fabric would let some colour out so that a doll would get ruined.

 At this point I made some extra stains.

And then washing again. It was fun! I wish all laundering  could be that nice.

Because of all the proper laundering, the extra spots washed away almost totally. But all the washing (and sandpapering and filing) made the fabric look quite worn, and that is the most important thing. As you can see, the shift really looks worn when you compare it to that white batiste, which is the material of the shirt.

And here you can see also that the contrast between white batiste and dyed batiste is quite clear.

And here you can see the finished shirt.

 Cinderella's shift really looks worn! When I asked my husband what he thinks about this shift, he cried out (yes, he really cried out): "Poor Cinderella! Is this fair at all?" I remined him that it's only a temporay situation, that the fairy godmother is on her way already. He was reliefed :)

My precious! Hand painted Helen Kish Doll. And it's all mine!

The day when she arrived was a beautiful (...and cold) winter day, so my walk to a post office and back was like a part of celebrating the happy family event.

Back home I was really really excited about this view. I don't often receive packages from overseas. Actually I could say that I never receive packages from overseas.

At this point I was super excited.

At this point I was like multiple-super-extra-double excited.

At this point I was more than overjoyed.

At this point I was in love.

We all were very tired after all those emotions, so we took a nap together.

After a proper rest it was time to intorduce her to the girls. I was really proud of them all. The girls gave her a warm welcome, and the newcomer was outgoing and cheery despite her long travel!