Big and little house moving

Since returning from the SA adventure the dolls and us have had a hectic time because we moved house 2 weeks ago.  Not far, but everything still needed to be packed up and with the amount of stuff we'd accumulated after 18 years in one home (including the addition of 2 daughters, 3 dolls houses, lots of play dolls,  as well as my husband's hobby things) this was a mammoth task in less than a week.  Our former neighbour kindly allowed us to put the dolls houses in her spare bedroom so we didn't have to move them with everything else, but I made sure all the doll family came in our car rather than the large removal van.

Since the move we've been very busy unpacking boxes (we have approximately 2,000 beloved books), flooring the loft, putting up beds and finding places for things in our new home, so it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that we were finally able to go and collect the dolls houses and put them into their new positions.  The Triang has gone in my younger daughter's bedroom, so that her Christmas expanded Polly Pocket collection is able to make the most of it, Mrs Harvey's shop has gone into my elder daughter's bedroom and my unfinished Greenleaf Westville now lives on its special table in our bedroom.  As yet the 2 larger dolls houses are unfurnished, as we've got further decorating to do to the full size house so there is no point unpacking things only to put them away again soon afterwards.  But having the Westville in my bedroom is a constant gentle reminder that I started building that house about 21 years ago and it is about time I finished it!  However for the past couple of nights tiling the full sized bathroom has been my main focus and I'm rather tired tonight, so the Westville will have to wait a bit longer before I can give it my attention.

We've got the TV set up so haven't missed an episode of Dancing on Ice since it started 3 weeks ago, and nor have the play dolls!  What is more there is a new addition with skates to the play doll line up and he belongs to me. I'll keep you guessing though, as I haven't taken photos of him yet.

Designing a new skating dress

This evening I've been fiddling about with pieces of strong tissue paper (actually the paper that came out of a Hotter Shoes box) to make pattern pieces for a new doll skating dress.  As you know if you've read my blog for a while, my girls have several Gotz play dolls and they all have ice skates and skating dresses (or outfit for Peter the boy).  Most of these outfits I've made myself, only Jayne came with a showy figure skating outfit (Samantha's original outfit is more for the smart leisure skater).  Up until now I've made dresses with a classic leotard and skirt around the waist design.  I based the leotard on the 'Sarah at the ballet' outfit.  But in the Christmas sales I picked up some lovely fabric remnants at John Lewis that inspired me to do an empire line dress like some of the gorgeous dresses Jayne Torvill has been wearing for Dancing on Ice.

I follow the blog of IceMom, a mother in the USA whose daughter is progressing very well with her ice skating.  IceMom sews Icegirl's skating outfits and reviews the patterns and how successfully they've made up.  Her blog is extremely helpful, and it has pointed me to figure skating dress patterns, such as the Jalie range, which she really likes to sew.

I've found a Jalie pattern for an empire line dress #2674, and was lucky that they had the instructions for sewing to download free from their website.  4 pages of this pdf printed out was enough to give me the shapes of the pattern pieces and equally importantly how it all fits together.  I've now cut out all the paper pieces, but it is too late to start cutting fabric tonight.  I'm not going to cut the new lovely fabric first, this is an experimental pattern after all, so I'm using some plain white stretch jersey of a (new) T-shirt as my test piece.  If it works out okay, and looks alright, I might even be able to use the test costume on a doll and pretty it up with some sequins, but at least I won't be cutting the beautiful fabric until I know that the pattern works.

Hopefully I might be able to do some more to it tomorrow night.  I'll keep you posted.

Doll play - for teens

We took our girls to a local church quiz night recently.  My elder girl invited two of her friends to join us, and the other children on their team (the children insisted on a kids only team) were two nearly teen boys my girls know through church.  My younger daughter decided to take along two of the Gotz dolls, dressed up in their Bavarian outfits (well we had just been to see the Sound of Music!).  Funnily enough she actually took along the shared dolls, Jayne and Peter.  Samantha and Harriet, who were still dressed in Halloween outfits, had to stay at home (we knew those outfits wouldn't go down well at a church quiz!)

The two visiting girls arrived at our house and saw my little one playing with her dolls, and my elder daughter's soft toys all over her bedroom floor.  One admitted she loved her own soft toys, but my elder girl was careful not to admit that any of the dolls actually belonged to her.  We had discussed this beforehand, as quite often my girls use elder daughter's larger bedroom floor for doll play, and I was concerned that she would be teased by her friends for playing with dolls, aged 13.  When they all got into the car, one of the girls was very happy to play dolls with my little girl (they played 'hide and seek' would you believe!).  I think it was partly the novelty of having a little sister for the evening (this child has three younger brothers), but at the Quiz I noticed she was quite happy to have the two dolls on her lap for a while in full view of lots of adult strangers and the boys, and later was happy to resume the hide and seek game when we took them to their respective homes. 

I think it is sad that we expect our children to grow up so fast, and put away childish things.  There is so much pressure to conform to being a teen as soon as they start secondary school (if you don't like pop music you are 'so not cool').  My elder daughter's friends are not the types who go in for heavy makeup yet (and are despised by some of the really trendy girls for being just a little bit different from the average), though they all enjoy pop music and Nintendo DS, etc.  But still liking dolls isn't something they can readily admit even to their own peers, it would be social death in the dog-eat-dog school environment.  So observing the girls with the dolls at the quiz night gave me a quiet sense of pleasure, I felt as if, albeit briefly, I had scored a small point for the regaining of their fast disappearing childhood just by treating the taking of dolls to a public event as perfectly normal and not commenting on their play which would have made them self conscious.