Goodbye Blanchette!

It's been a really rough two weeks, and with a long weekend upon us, I've decided to just take a little time and remake Blanchette's dress for my Isar. After modeling the Victorian gown, she's naked again, with nothing of her own to wear, so she really could use something special.

And Blanchettes dress is definitely "special". As I'm picking it apart I can't believe all the effort that I put into that dress so long ago - it must have taken forever to make.  Thankfully it was all neatly sewn together, with very limited use of any glue - just to hold the wired pearls into position between the flower petals around the neckline - and that glue has turned all yellow.

There are so many layers to this dress: a ruffled slip, a padded farthingale to hold it out, a silver lamé underskirt, and two layers of tulle, the inner one with gold spots, and the outer one with silver spots which I heavily beaded and embellished with cascading streams of white flowers.

Then there's the five heavily-embellished petal panels. The bodice is also heavily embellished. The challenge is going to be reworking everything so it becomes a removable outfit. In order to reduce unsightly bulk on a figure's back, I used to always make the bodices one piece around the neckline, and open under the arms, so I could slip the bodice over the doll's head, and stitch it together under her arms. Of course that won't work for a BJD so I have to split the center back, and that means cutting through some of the beading and having to rework it later.

I'm going to remake the ensemble to fit my Isar. Her large bust fits almost perfectly into Blanchette's dress bodice. The skirts are a touch long, but since I have to rework them all onto new waistbands, that's easy enough to fix. Isar is too old to be a companion to my new young Adrian, who has Blanchette's true love's outfit now, but maybe someday I'll order a younger-looking girl with a large bust from Iplehouse. In the meantime it's going to be Isar's.