Welcome, and sewing for the girls

Blog silence recently has once again occured due to my headlong, busy life.  However despite my silence, two more people have decided to follow my blog:

Puppenstubennostalgie is German and has a great mini blog at http://puppenstubennostalgie.blogspot.com/ which is well worth visiting.

Altafulla has three blogs, the one being of the most interest to miniaturists is  http://altafullaminiatures.blogspot.com/ she blogs in Catalan and English.

Welcome to my blog.

I have been busy sewing this week, but not for miniatures.  For once I've actually made some clothes for my two daughters.  In the sales just after Christmas, I found a pattern and some lovely material in John Lewis.  I've finally made the time to make up the summer dress for my 6 year old girl.  It is from a Simplicity Lizzie McGuire pattern, 4721.  The material is 'city girl holiday by Kitty Yoshida' and was gorgeous to sew (no snagging or slipping).  A few weeks ago my elder girl spotted some batik material in John Lewis and decided she wanted it made into a skirt, so she poured over the pattern books and chose Simplicity 2620, skirt view D.  I also finally succumbed to a pattern I've had my eye on for a while, Simplicity 18" doll clothing 4364.

First I made up the dress, it took about 2 and half evenings.  My little girl is small for her age, so I had to adjust the bodice, and therefore the skirt had to be gathered a bit under the arms to fit the bodice.

Then I made up the skirt.  This took 2 evenings.  Then, crazy me, I started cutting out pattern pieces and material for the doll dress at 11 pm on Friday night, and just kept on sewing.  What possessed me I do not know, I had a DVD on which I've seen before (The Greatest Show on Earth - old fashioned, certainly not politically correct by modern standards, but a good story) and didn't want to stop that or the sewing.  I finally went to bed at 2.30 am then was woken at 6.30 am by my bright eyed youngster!  I spend part of the morning finishing off the dress for Samanta the Gotz doll and my little girl was thrilled.

I haven't yet photographed the skirt, but will do soon.  In the meantime, enjoy these photos of Samantha in her little dress, and the summer dress for my daughter.

Samantha in her new summer dress, and the child's dress

I used flash for this photo - it shows up the printed gold in the fabric
(click on the photo for a closer view)