Still Struggling

I've been working on several things the past two weeks, and things are very slowly coming along. Rather too slowly in my opinion. I wish everything was finished!

Jan made me another set of foam-core walls a while back, which I wanted to make into 'interior castle walls', with an irregular stone design. I had painted the background the colour for the 'mortar', and yesterday finally stamped on the stone work. I had cut up a package of sponges from Dollarama to represent the different sizes of stone blocks.  When the paint dried, it seemed a touch too 'blue', especially with all the brown furniture, so I brushed over the entire wall with some very diluted brown paint, to kill the blue and warm up the wall a bit. I've done the lower right side...

The green gown keeps fighting me every step along the way.  I sewed the underarm seams yesterday, so was also able to sew on the skirt.  Then I had to try the dress on Bianca, and the skirt was WAY too long.  How did that happen?? I had measured it before I cut and hemmed it a few weeks back. But it was way too long, so I had to cut off an inch and a half, which meant the two days spent hand-hemming it also went out the window.  Now I get to do it all over again....

I had thought about the sleeves a lot before starting on them, whether to make the lower end overlap and close with snaps, or insert eyelets to lace them up, or to just sew the narrow sleeve shut so that the doll's hands would need to be removed to put the gown on and take it off. As much as I find it a bit frustrating (and need an assistant) to remove a doll's hands when putting on or taking off an outfit, sewing such narrow sleeves does look a lot better than having snaps or lacing.  So this gown will also require removing the doll's hands.

When the gown was on the doll, I tried on the hanging sleeves to see how they'd look, and I decided I preferred the gown without them.  So much for two tries, and three evenings spent beading partway around the edge of the first one!   But I like the gown better without them, so maybe they'll work on one of the other two gowns I have planned.

​However, without the hanging sleeves, I need to finish the beading at the top of the 'under-sleeves' since I hadn't bothered to complete the beading pattern because that part of the sleeve would have been hidden under the hanging sleeve. I also need to finish the beading around the wrist.  I had only done the middle part of the sleeve, after hand-stitching on a very narrow lace ruffle, because my sewing machine doesn't like stitching anywhere near beads.... 

I sewed the inner bodice yesterday, tried it on the doll, but the neckline was way too high, so I had to turn it back inside out and make it a lot lower and wider. I wanted to bead the neckline and chose tiny green and gold beads, thinking they'd match the colours of the gown, and got halfway round before deciding that I wasn't sure that I liked it.....

So now I have to decide if I want to remove it all and start all over with tiny gold and pearl beads.  We stopped in at Michaels to see if they had tiny pearls the right size, but they only had gold and black beads in the size I need.  There is a bead store in Toronto that has them in pearl, but it's not that easy to get to, since it requires taking the busiest highway in North America, and that's often nothing more than endless stop-and-go, and seems a rather overwhelming trip just to get a $3 vial of beads. The other option is to sew a row of bigger pearl beads around the bodice opening up against the row of green. Maybe I should try that first to see how that looks. If I decide that I still don't like it, it will be just a bit more to remove.....

And here I thought this would be a quick and easy gown....

But on a positive note, while I had Bianca undressed, I tried on the test bodice for the next two gowns. They will be like the ones I made for the bigger Iplehouse ladies, with an underdress that closes in the back, and an overdress that laces up the front. The test bodice fit perfectly....