Further Tudor Doll Costume Merriment.

I’ve been enjoying watching a real change in my girls over the last few days. Amelie and Josie have both really persisted at sewing Tudor clothes for their Groovy Girl dolls and have got better and better as they went along. Both sewed gather petticoats in jersey fabric (idea for a doll, falls really nicely) and then shifts in some cheap fleecy stuff I had to hand. The net effect of these two bits was to have dolls dressed like this, as noted below.

After that, we moved on to trying to sort out kirtles, an overdress. Jax has done a good explanation of all the layers here. We needed to cheat a bit with this as they were not really going to work if we tried to make them lace at the front as they should.

My ingenious brainwave was to enlarge this pattern piece using the ipad and trace it over the screen. I showed them how to fit and alter a pattern piece and make it up in scrap first. With some jiggling we worked out that a fake opening front by stitching it up the front and putting some laces stitched on to it and a buttoned back would do well enough (as they say). I altered the pattern to fit our faux design.

Josie did a fine job of stitching hers and has slowed down after that. She’s got an apron she made and a headscarf E made for her and is happy. Amelie however, carried on with unusual concentration and has done an amazing job.

This is it with front seam in and shoulders pinned. Josie did a great job.

Amelie did the red version, which is about as authentic as a stitching an iphone holder into it 😉

As well as a similar kirtle top she then went on to do a skirt, also in felt which seems to work quite well as ‘wool’ fabric. She put all the knife pleats into it herself (I showed her better pinning after this photo) and stitched the waistband beautifully. She also designed her own coif which isn’t particularly authentic (I helped with the brim) but is beautifully fitted. She has quite a knack and I’ve encouraged her lots.

These aren’t joined yet but the skirt buttons at the back to keep it on.

They’ve learned so much in 3 days; better stitching, pattern fitting and planning, cutting on folds, faking, altering, looking for idea, finishing touches, how different materials work and today we looked at lots of the clothes their dolls already have to see what we have learned that could be used to make modern clothes too.Huge sense of achievement for us all and I feel a good bit less awed by the prospect of making all our outfits for joining next year.

I feel a revamp of the Tudor MuddlePuddle pages coming on; they are all very excited by this project.