Monday, January 30, 2012

Marie style half doll

 Here she is my Marie style half doll, this is for a swap on my MAMA swap group. We sent materials to our partners so they could dress their own half dolls. My partner was Tabitha.  Their are five layers of clothing 2 petticoats, and 3 over skirts.
 Here is a side view you can get a better idea of how the farthingale works to hold out the over skirts, The french call it a pannier hooped petticoat.
 A back view, it took me a while to figure  out a pattern for the over skirts, so I have many trial and error skirts I made for the final pattern, as I had to fit them to the doll and had nothing to go from.
The big pink bow is a beautiful silk ribbon.
 A close up of the many layers, I used silk dupioni ribbon for at the ruching that the tiny silk flowers I made are attached to,that is the first pink layer. The next 2 layers or over skirts are trimmed with lace, actually the top one is lace trimmed with lace and beads. I sew crystals to the middle over skirt as I read that Marie Antoinette had precious gems sewn to her gowns.
 Marie was fond of big hair do's and hats so I thought why not give it a go and try to make a hat. This was my first try and it is really one of my favorite things about the doll. I think I would like one for myself. (smile) I used some of the tiny silk flower I made and some feathers in pink, white and green.
Her sash  is silk ribbon trimmed with the tiny silk flowers.

 
 A close up of the hat, I am so pleased with the way it turned out.
 Here she is in her second petticoat, you can see the farthingale sticking out from her waist like flat wings. I made it from wire and covered it with quilt batting. Not pretty but it served its purpose
 A better view of the top petticoat. Each layer of lace was sewn on by hand.
 This is the first over skirt
Better view of the first over skirt, you can see the ruching with the dupioni silk ribbon, and the silk flowers I also added some swarovski crystals between the flowers for added bling. to bad they don't show up better.

Well there she is my first half doll. I am happy with the way she turned out and I plan on doing another one or 2 down the line, as I got 2 on ebay from England. TTFN

Sunday, January 22, 2012

My latest French style wall pocket. This is so pretty but my camera couldn't really capture the colors and detail to show it off. Above is the up close detail of the pocket, I used an image of a young Marie Antoinette, and surrounded it with silk ribbon embroidery, silk flowers that I hand crafted and some pretty crystals that don't show up in the photo.
 You can see it full length in the above picture, it measures 29" in length and 9" across. I used half of a vintage lace dresser scarf for the very long ruffle at the bottom. And topped it with an extra wide gathered lace, added the handcrafted silk ribbon flowers at the sides of the ruffle.
 The above photo is featuring the upper part of the pocket, showing all of the lace and silk ribbon embroidery I did. I love doing the embroidery and it looks so wonderful and adds such a vintage look to almost anything.
In this last picture you can get a close up of the lace scarf and the handcrafted rosettes,the top layer of vintage lace and the wonderful      style lace that tops the 2 ruffles.  I so enjoyed making this French style wall pocket and it is featured in the Marie Antoinette Mail Art Group as a swap. TTFN