Meet Matroshka

I've taken photos of doll happenings this year and haven't had the time until now to write about them.  So this story starts on Easter Day.

Once again my girls did an Easter Egg hunt around the garden, this year I planted clues in the eggs and they had to match up questions and answers about Easter.

The completed Easter Quiz

 

Their prize were Real Easter Eggs (the only commercially produced egg in the UK with the Easter message printed on the box) and a joint gift of a Gotz Matroshka doll.

A Real Easter Egg

It seemed appropriate to give them this particular girl because Russian nested dolls, which always remind me of Easter Eggs, are called Matryoshka dolls. I did suggest they could call her Marie or Maria or Mary, but they decided to keep her exotic name.

 My elder daughter examines the new doll

 Matroshka from the side

She has the same face as my younger daughter's first Gotz doll (Ice Skating) whom she called Samantha.  I like this face better than the more popular 'Sarah/Hannah' Gotz dolls (who are lovely).  Matroshka has long blond hair and an outfit of tartan, faux fur and white jersey fabric which includes a Russian nested doll printed on her white top.  Both my girls were delighted with her.  I'd bought her in TK Maxx earlier last year at a much lower price than RRP, but was served by a rude young male cashier who commented that dolls were creepy.  I refrained from telling him that it was the height of bad manners to pass derogatory comments on customer choice and taste to a customer's face, though it was tempting to suggest that he keep his thoughts to himself (I think he was too young to ever have watched 'Are you being served'!)

Matroshka quickly became a favourite in the doll family and when we travelled to Germany for May half term to the Black Forest for a Fair Organ Festival which takes place every 3 years, my girls decided to take Matroshka, Peter, Matilda and Belle.  The Aussie girls hadn't been on a trip to Europe and for Peter it was like going home, as his original outfit is Bavarian.  We have the matching girl outfit (Gotz Dirndl dress) so this was taken for our new blond girl to wear.

We always stay at a small family run Bed & Breakfast in a little valley above the town when we visit the festival. It has the most glorious views down the valley, a stream running endlessly beside it (which you can hear from the bedrooms at night), serves fresh trout as well as home made Black Forest Gateaux (the chef owns the hotel and it is his speciality) and the service is friendly and welcoming (my girls love it).  My elder daughter is learning German for her GCSEs and practised her elementary German with their warm encouragement.

 Matilda tries to share my younger daughter's ice cream in the hotel

Belle enjoys the glorious sunshiny view from our breakfast table on Saturday morning

Belle did visit the Saturday of the organ festival and Matroshka and Peter came out on the Sunday, but carrying the dolls about town all day is tiring for small arms after a while, so they only came to meals at the hotel after that.

 

A monkey and barrel organ at the festival - these monkeys are very rude
and squirt water at you if you get too close! 
They are operated via a series of levers and have
various hand movements, some of them rather naughty!

A vintage doll for sale in a side street at the festival

Matroshka and Peter in front of an Alfred Bruder fair organ outside an organ workshop

Matroshka, Peter and my younger daughter outside an organ workshop

Matilda and Belle in their new party dresses in the hotel at dinner time

We stayed a couple of extra days after the festival was over and had a relaxing time exploring Waldkirch a bit more than we usually do.  We came across a delightful toy shop where I held a baby Kathe Kruse doll for the first time and saw several others, they were beautiful and very tempting but I resisted.

 Peter and Matroshka outside our hotel on the second last morning

In their Bavarian outfits outside Gasthof Altersbach, Kandel Pass, Black Forest

Matilda and Belle at breakfast the morning we left

(the clouds were low and heavy with rain)

Harriet the rockstar

As explained in my previous post, I've been sewing my verson of the Gotz 'Hannah the Rockstar' outfit.  The outfit is now finished, the heartshaped sunglasses purchased and on her face, I've added a ribbon strap to the miniature guitar to help her hold it, and I think Harriet looks pretty cool.  Even my husband was impressed, and that is saying a lot (he tolerates the dolls as a fact of living with 3 doll mad females, shows occasional interest in the play dolls but is more interested in the dollshouses especially as he built one of them from a kit). 

However I haven't yet made the microphone and its stand to complete the outfit.  This will require a couple of pieces of dowel, some wadding, and some silvery fabric to cover the dowel.  However since finishing the outfit on Saturday night, I've been busy cleaning and tidying my elder daughter's bedroom while she is away on her second school trip in 2 weeks (this time a whole week away playing her violin), so I've had no time to make the microphone and stand.  Hopefully I'll make a start on it tomorrow night. 

I haven't taken photos of Harriet in her outfit because it doesn't seem complete without the microphone, so I shall tantalise you in the meantime with a description:  The dress is red with contrast material of purple, green, brown & red strips inlaid with shiny thread, the bottom of the dress has a band of red sequin material to match her sequin hairband, she wears red tights, the tartan plimsols, and the lilac heartshaped sunglasses.  The guitar is black.  With Harriet's auburn hair, this makes quite an arresting sight!

Welcome Princessclaire1000 to my blog - from your profile picture I'm guessing you are interested in American Girl dolls, but I can't find a blog link for you.

Sewing again

As explained in my previous post, this time of year in our family is always very busy.  However the birthdays are over now, as are my daughter's music exams and I've at last managed to carve out a few evenings to start working on dolls clothes again.  I keep wanting to get the dollshouse on the go but get distracted by outfits for 50cm dolls instead!  The new Gotz catalogue is out, and my elder girl is particularly taken with 'Hannah the Rockstar' - she loves her outfit even though it is a deep rich pink (not my red head's favourite colour).  The outfit doesn't come separately, Gotz are clever at attracting people to buying more dolls, but as we've already got an extensive family of Gotz, Australian Girl and Euro girl dolls, I don't want to buy another blond Sarah/Hannah doll.  So I've decided to try and copy the outfit, though with different material.

I've got as far as sketching out the pattern based on a Joan Hind pattern for an A-line dress, though adapted to suit the pleats in the rockstar dress, and have just cut out the material, so am almost ready to start sewing.  I have also bought a real guitar (black plastic) which is very similar to the guitar that Hannah is holding (ebay again), it even has its own padded case.  Some months ago I bought some tartan plimsols which go with the two different materials I'm using for this dress.  All of this planning, material matching and considering is happening while my younger girl sleeps upstairs and my elder girl is away for a few days on a school trip, so neither of them know.

I'll post more as the dress progresses.  In the meantime, welcome 'all4dolls' to my blog.

Harriet's new violin

My elder daughter is a young violinist, and recently did very well in her Grade 4 violin and Grade 1 piano examinations. Months ago she told me that she wanted her Gotz doll Harriet to have a violin, but Gotz do not have such an accessory for their dolls. I scoured the web, and of course found that American Girl dolls have violins and music stands, but the cost to ship from the USA was just too much. Eventually I found an equivalent violin on ebay from a US seller, who was also able to sell me a My Twinn doll music stand. The music stand is able to extend higher than Harriet needs, as My Twinn is about 3 inches taller than Gotz. It also came with some miniature sheet music.

Harriet, her violin, stand and the violin case

I bought these items months ago so they were put away. When my daughter's examination results came through earlier this week, I presented her with the violin and music stand. She was delighted and became absorbed with getting Harriet to hold the violin just right. She discovered that the moving turn-key for the music box in the violin resulted in the violin suddenly falling out of Harriet's arms as it caught on her clothes, but as it is a music box sound rather than a violin sound, it isn't very authentic anyway. I've discovered an Australian Girl Doll photo on Flickr with an audio file uploaded that plays violin sounding music, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/37638544@N07/3614916075/ which is much better.

Harriet is wearing a summery set from the 2009 Gotz catalogue, and the crocs / ducs came from the USA via ebay.

Horrible velcro again

Anna in her new Gotz dress

This morning my younger daughter wanted to change my Anna doll into party clothes, and we realised that Anna's own wardrobe consisted of her original outfit with the lovely suede boots, a skirt and the navy party dress I had made, her ice skating dress and silver skates, but no party shoes - she had borrowed black boots from one of the other dolls at Christmas for the party dress photo. So I decided to give her a present which had been hidden away since I had bought some of the 2009 catalogue clothes earlier this year for my girls dolls. This was the only item still not brought out from that secret stash of clothes and I had always intended it for the Anna doll.

It is a lovely silvery dress with red and white patterned rouched skirt, matching silver shoes and handbag. However after putting the dress on, my daughter decided the other party dress had to go on first for a dance before this new dress could be worn for a picnic, so off came the dress again. However the long velcro strip down the back kept catching the inside of the dress, and in taking it off, the top of the dress was damaged on either side (and I was being careful).

Both sides of the back of the dress were damaged when removing
the dress for the first time - all because of the velcro

I also noticed that the little handbag was vastened with velcro, but the tabs didn't line up well, and the bag was closing in a distorted fashion, and the flap was gaping badly. Additionally, the velcro was catching on the silver threads in the material.

The not properly closing handbag and
the badly position velcro which caused the problem

I was really disappointed and annoyed about this - nasty velcro once again was causing problems for the clothes, resulting in destruction.

There was only one solution, and I acted immediately. Out came needle and silver thread (rather stiff stuff to use for sewing) and I used careful blanket stitches to repair the damaged dress. Later in the evening I sewed press studs (silver rather than black) on the handbag and removed both strips of velcro so the bag now closes properly and I've pulled the slight natural distortion straight again.

The little handbag with press studs, without velcro

In the afternoon three of the dolls joined my young daughter for a picnic tea party in her bedroom. Samantha was dressed for ballet, Jayne was dressed in some of Samantha's original skating outfit and Anna came in her new party dress.

Picnic tea party

The ruched skirt is kept in place by a white band stitched on the inside of the skirt which makes the skirt narrower than it looks, so this meant getting her to sit could only be done by pulling the skirt up a bit. But despite this annoyance, and the irritation of having to do repairs and adjustments to a new bought outfit, it is still a lovely dress, shoes and bag set.