Little French Witch Costume

Polly Pratt's Halloween Party

Polly is eagerly awaiting October 31rst as she's giving her first, and a very splendid Halloween party.  Her costume is sweetly adorable beginning with a white silk dress whose sleeves are edged in lace.  Her lilac silk panier and corset are all one piece, like a little ballerina tutu that hooks in the back.  Draping her young shoulders is an orangey-red cape to match that of Daisy's, and her gorgeous little ruffly witch hat tops her curls. 


Little French Witch Costume

Polly Pratt's first illustrated outfit is just as sweet as she is.

Wishing you all a fanciful Halloween as the autumn winds blow chilly and cool.

In the works...

With cauldron, broomstick and kitties

Sheila Young's Illustration

Socks and Fran Quinn's Polly Jane Shoes

A Fabulously Ruffled and Lined Hat

Love,
Miss E Mouse

An Elegant Victorian Halloween

Lettie and Daisy's Halloween Costumes

And, so it has been a wee bit over a month since I popped in to post a note.  Twelve of those days were spent on a true holiday road trip.  We took off for southern Utah and hiked some incredible trails on Boulder Mountain where the aspens were at peak change.  We also jotted down to Moab to hike the red rock canyons and cliffs, breathtaking in their form and physical challenges.  The change of pace and scenery were so welcomed, yet I hit the floor running as soon as we returned.  Isn't that always the way?

Upon returning I designated one day, for each piece, to design and create the items necessary to complete two sets of Lettie and Daisy's Halloween costumes.  During this time and preceding our holiday, I took a few photos of the costumes in process.  While I personally feel the candlestick hat is the most remarkable, it is the border of witches on the same costume that has illicited the most interest.  Unless you attempt to make something like the candlestick hat, it can be difficult to fully comprehend all that it took to create it. 

All those flocked witches!

Let's discuss the border of witches.  Victorian postcards and ephemera often show charming tots dressed in elaborately designed Halloween costumes.  These are not the costumes the children wear today, but more of a romantic turn of visual delight.  Ladies would wear elegant gowns with pointy witch hats, and goblins and demons would often fly or perch throughout the illustrations.  And, children could be seen wearing colorful Pierrot (French clown) costumes, and skirts bordered with witches flying on broomsticks.  In all the research I have done, I've never found a written description or process on how those witch borders were rendered.  Could it possibly have been just an illustrator's fancy?  Could they have been large cut-outs sewn on as patches?  What a lot of work that would have been!  And, we haven't yet crossed an actual costume like this stored away in some east coast attic trunk.  So, this is what I did.

Figuring out placement.

Some of you may remember the pumpkin costume I made last year, the second outfit I'd made.  On that page, of The Ladies' Home Journal, was an elegant gown bordered in witches.  I'd fully intended to make it, and had found some black netting with flocked witches on it, that would become iron-ons for the process.  A year went by, and the netting remained in the fabric box, so when this costume came up, I knew exactly what to do.  In short, the witches were cut out with the netting around them.  Under a paper towel, the images were pressed to the double-sided paper, then the witches were carefully cut out and pressed onto the border of the dress.  Easy?  Not really.  What I discovered along the way was that the netting sported five, maybe six styles of witches.  Some had hats tilted back.  Some had fully skirts.  Some had shorter broomsticks, and then there were smaller witches by half.  Just finding the exact matches and cutting out twenty (for two costumes) took an entire day.  In a perfect world, the witches would have been equal in size to half the length of where the yellow vest hits, but we do the best we can. 

Peeling the backings off.

I was asked if I had painted them.  Surely I'm flattered, but wet paint upon fiber swells the fibers and often bleeds, so the experience with painting floweres on the hat band I did earlier this year, was a one time process.  Another way you could do this is with a stencil and a black, permanant marker.  However, the flocked iron-on witches are exacting and pristine.
 
The candlestick hat was my other bane.  Out of all the buckram based hats I've made, this one posed the most challenges.  There are four basic shapes that needed to be created, then sewn together.  One was the brim, which is slightly turned up.  One is the cone of the crown.  There was also the candle base and the handle.  It took me two weeks to figure out the best approach, and I even tried a wire mesh sculpture which cut my little paws to pieces.  At one point, I purchased a crystal candlestick and tried to for the buckram around it.  Nothing worked.  I settled, finally, on building it from buckram and hand stitching the entire hat.  There is a little wood disc in the top that I drilled a hole through to set the candle in. 

A soft-sculpture with real candle.

Finding a candle the right size was also a trial, so I took tapers and with my exacto knife, carved the tips of the tapers down to the right scale.  To smooth the surfaces, I dipped them in boiling water for a few seconds.  Viola!  Candles for the hats.

Each dress was fully lined for ease of hem and adding volume.  The orangey-red cape-coat is also fully lined, as are the yellow vests.  You may recognize the vest pattern from the 4th of July costume.  The witch hat is a buckram base covered in heavy costume satin, with a yellow silk band.  As with all my hats, they, too, are fully lined.  Stockings were made and so were four pairs of shoes.  I'd run out of white lambskin, so I made the little bat slippers from the same silk as the dresses.  The bats are leather, which seemed appropriate (leathery bat wings and all).  And tiny thread loops sewn to the stockings keep the silk laces up on her legs. 

One other trial was in creating the Marie Antoinette sleeves of the candlestick hat costume.  These are half-moon fans of fabric edged with gathered lace, and ruched at the crook of the elbow.  Its the time it takes to figure these details out that (so essential in creating the overall look), is often daunting!

Right now I'm in the midst of Polly Pratt's costume, and the processes will be quite similar in approach.  She's very sweet to sew for since she is smaller in stature, and younger in age. 

Hope you're having a colorful autumn.  Enjoy each day and gather a few apples and leaves to decorate your own little hole in the wall.

Love,
Miss E. Mouse

When Polly Pratt Came to Play...

Welcome Polly Pratt!

The year was 1919 and Sheila Young was now illustrating paper dolls for Good Housekeeping.  As the windblown pages flew from the calendar tablet, a little girl about nine years old was introduced with fashions to reflect the changing times.  Still elaborately detailed with ruffles, collars, embroidery and all manner of fussy hats, Polly Pratt''s paper doll wardrobe would celebrate the world of feminine little girls from 1919 to 1921.



1919 Good Housekeeping's Polly

It came to mind sometime last spring that I might add Polly to my Sheila Young family of antique reproduction dolls.  You've met Daisy, Lettie Lane (inspired by Betty Bonnet who has brown hair), and now I'll introduce you to little Polly Pratt.  I phoned up Connie Zink, the artist of both my Daisy and Lettie, and we began to brainstorm on what it would take to come up with a Polly.  Connie knows her doll molds inside and out, and suggested the Steiner-C for my Polly.  I asked that she be smaller, as I see Lettie being about 12-years-old, and Polly's wardrobe and persona seemed that of a much younger child.  We came up with the idea to use the FS14B body, which would make Polly a 16" doll next to Lettie's eighteen inches.  Connie set to work, and my beautiful Polly was born!



Polly's First Halloween Costume

Currently she is still needing even a slip or some undies, but with Halloween approaching, and my customer having just ordered her own Polly, it was decided we must include a Halloween costume for Polly.  Notice that the illustration does include a slip, so at least she'll be modest when Halloween is over. 

This little charmer will of course need her own set of slopers, and I may approach the first by reducing a basic Lettie pattern by about 10%.  I really enjoy the idea of the baby doll style dresses and those above the knee.  There is an endless parade of sweet outfits with many adorable accessories in the Polly Pratt paper doll series.  Fear not!  Lettie will still be sewn for, but we may be doing these next year in tandem.  One for Polly, one for Lettie.  So many of the wardrobe themes overlap and they'll look especially darling displayed as sister dolls.

The dress under the cape-coat.

Meanwhile, the Halloween costume work continues.  I finished the base outfits for the orange-red cape-coat, and began the dresses for the candlestick hat costume.  Sometimes we have to actually sew something up before we can decide that we did it all wrong...and that's what I did over the last two days.  This costume will be all about the sleeves.  And, we continue...the creative process!

Love,
Miss E. Mouse

Fear of Flying...On a Broomstick

Lettie Lane's Halloween Costumes

Up from my little hole in the wall, and taking a much needed breather here.  A perfect time to journal on process I've been going through to make these Halloween costumes for Lettie Lane.  I guess I've been at it for...well...since September the first. And, I feel like I've been working on the costumes for a month! 

As usual, I began drafting the patterns for both costumes.  I had honestly hoped these would be a snap, but not-so-strangely enough, they've been yet another real challenge.  As with anything I approach, I try to do the tough stuff first.  Well, that would be everything, it seems, with these costumes.  I can't wait to begin the hats, the shoes and the lantern.  Someday I'm going to learn to enjoy this, but for now, I'm still learning, and wouldn't you know, its the collar, once again, that gave me trouble. 

So what are we looking at?  There's a witch's costume and a Halloween candlestick hat costume.  The cape on the witch's costume is actually a coat, and I've a funny story to share.  After stitching together the mock up of this coat in muslin, I knew first of all that the collar was all wrong - too small, too round.  I also began to wonder how I was going to make welt pockets in the coat.  I'd gone so far as to gather up the sides and posted a letter to a friend of mine, Arlene, who is a genius at sewing for Bleuette.  I mentioned the pockets and showed her the illustrations.  She wrote back that what she'd observed in the illustration is a broom going under the coat and lifting up the back of it.  And that the lump I mistook for a pocket, was actually the shape of the broom handle!  How utterly embarrassed I was!  With all the painting background that I have, why wouldn't I have seen this?  I thanked her profusely, and had to chuckle a bit because it is so like me to make more of something than need be.  I guess I'm so used to detecting hidden details that I imagined a few that didn't exist!  How's that for humility?!  At least I didn't have to try welt pockets in the coat, but admit that I did make a few in small muslin squares just in case.




The mock up.  Lab coat vs. Halloween cape/coat.

Too small and wouldn't meet.

White.  I've also been sewing on alot of white fabric lately.  Here's the thing.  A watercolor illustrator's friend is the white of paper.  It is the base and background for all the art she paints.  So, it is a prevalent color.  To give myself a change of pace, I made the pumpkin-yellow vests first.  I used the same sloper pattern I drew for the 4th of July Patriotic costumes.  I still need to do a little tweeking to the pattern, but the basic shape was  there.  It took me four tries between the two vests to get the hooks in the right places and neatly sewn.  With thread loops and hooks, you have to decide if you wish the back seams to match up or slightly overlap.  Proper placement of both the loop and the hook is essential.  If I don't like the way hook is stitched on, off it comes and we start anew.  Same with the loops.  Yes, it takes practice, but even then, the threads of the loop can get twisted and this is unattractive.

I was delighted with the sunny pumpkin-yellow color and it was reminiscent of the Pumpkin Costume I made for Daisy last year.  Loved that hat!!



Back to the drawing board!

After the vests were done, I still wasn't ready to start sewing on white, so I began the coats.  Even after I drew the collar three times, and tested it the same, once it was cut on the good fabric and stitched to the coat, both the collar and coat edge were too small to fit around the neck.  Such a disappointment!  And, a waste of fabric.  It was back to the drawing board, literally.  The collar in the illustration is high on the neck.  I still haven't figured out how that is possible, but I did manage to get a good facsimile.  I contend that the illustrator can do so much more than the seamstress.  Unless I had a true example to study, I can't see how this is possible.  Regardless, I'm happy with the final results and it took three tries to get everything to meet properly.

Lastly, I had another challenge finding suitable ties.  They simply don't make satin ribbon in the same color as the coat, and silk would be to fine.  Also, if they did carry that exact color, what would I do with 25 yards of it?!  They don't sell it by the yard.  What I ended up using was bias tape.  Incredibly, I found it in the exact same color.  It was too wide to just fold over and stitch, so I trimmed one side off, folded that edge over with the iron and stitch the strip down the middle. 

Tomorrow we begin to sew on white!



Two Vests and Two Coat-Capes

Love,
Miss E. Mouse

Simple Simon Met a Pie Man...Going to School

 

 

Lettie Lane's Green Sweater School Set

Labor Day is just around the corner, and summer is nearing its end. Thoughts of trees turning gold and red, leaves wisping to the ground as little breezes pick up are so welcome and looked forward to. I, for one, adore the autumn season, and this little outfit seems to be just the thing Lettie needs for returning to school. While I can sit back now and enjoy how sweet these photos come out, I will be quite honest in that I need a break from plaid and pleats. Also, I will have to preface that this was not necessarily an outfit I would have chosen to make just for me. However, now that it is done, and in triplicate!, I enjoyed the process of puzzling this one out.


Looking like a little Scot!

Let's talk about the sweater jacket. Initially I thought to make it up in an interlock knit. I learned very quickly that this wouldn't do because the fabric was too light weight and had too much stretch. We can often fool ourselves thinking in terms of knits. I thought this to be a sweater, therefore thinking knit, but close observation of the illustration proved it to be a jacket with cuffs and a collar. What I found was a "cashmere" cotton men's shirt in XL and used this for the fabric. This was some of the nicest fabric I've even sewn with and if I could have found another in a S, I would have bought it to use as a light hiking jacket for myself. The 100% cotton and coziness of it made you think of a luxurious blanket.


The facing with the collar in between.



This was not the way to do it!

Again, I had to fuss with how to attach the collar. I recall from a conversation with the seamstress that got me started, that collars could be put on a variety of ways, and so I tried attaching it without a lining thinking a lining of the same fabric would be too bulky. Dead wrong. This was not something a mock up would have told me, and so I began again. Instead of giving the sweater jacket a full lining (and I didn't have a tafetta to work with), I created a facing that worked beautifully for it. This was one of my most successful facings, and I learned a great deal from drawing it and assembling the pieces. I keep trying to fool myself that we can sometimes get away with not having a full lining or facing, and this just isn't so.



A look at the little back.

The skirts gave me lots of trouble this time. Yes, I've pleated many a time, but when you're pleating plaids like these, the squares are sometimes more rectangular, and the lines might repeat in spaces further away from the neat little pleats you want to create. So I worked with these pleats for three days until I got the look I wanted. Even though I've been gathering the waist after the pleating for a fuller look, for some reason these skirts did not want to behave and I couldn't get the pleats to match in the back. This was quite frustrating and waistbands had to keep being remade. And, of course, to add into this challenge, I had to make one for the 10.5" Bleuette-sized doll. This meant going back out and finding new, and smaller patterned flannel to work with. What I had on hand was plaid silk dupioni! For this I used men's sleep trousers. Honestly, men's clothing has the best plaids. The larger skirts are a heavier flannel that I bought by the yard, but I just couldn't find suitable yardage for the smaller skirt.


With the Bleuette-sized one.

The buttons were also a challenge with these sweater jackets. Due to the weight of the fabric, using the metal cap and bottoms Dritz provides didn't work too well. It worked for the 1/2" covered buttons, but not the 7/16". What I did there was cut out little circles, gather stitch along the edges and pull tight and tack. I noticed that Tonner Doll Company did this for their NYCB costumes, so I thought, why not me? Bleuette's little sweater jacket went through three button renditions. The first was that I was off a mm in the row. Off they came. Then I got them stitched in the right place, but didn't like the beads I used. Off they came! I found little stone beads in a Hallmark store and they worked perfectly. There's a well known motto around my little hole in the wall that anything worth doing once, is worth doing three times. And, so it seems to have been a theme with this project.

Lastly, and the most fun of all, was making the hats. No surprise there! I used a Bleuette sailor hat pattern and intended to add a band like the pattern called for, but didn't like the look. It was not true to the illustration. The hat is essentially like a pie. A whole bottom, a top with a hole in it, and edged with a facing. Making three of them was like making little round tarts. I call them my Pie Hats.

During the next couple of days we are making tubs of applesauce to freeze for winter, as the trees are dropping pears and apples as this is their harvest time. By this weekend I'll be drafting patterns for Halloween costumes. Costumes! My favorite. Halloween and costuming. By the way, the Martha Stewart Halloween Handbook issue is on the racks now. Don't miss it!

Love,
Miss E. Mouse

 





Times Three

Off the Grid!

Morning Dress and School Hat

Ahhhh... A little time out for the mouse. The day is hot, the AC cool, and a pleasant Sunday is shaping up. The sewing room has been tidied up, and we're leaving no loose threads. I just finished something for me, or rather, my Big Lettie. I've had this one in the hopper for about a year now, just waiting for the right fabric and right time. I must have spent untold $$$ trying to find the right plaid for this one. Getting into that literal interpretation thing, I wanted just the right color, plaid pattern and fabric. At first I felt I was settling for the lighter blue color, but in the end the color seemed to suit her well. The dress is, again, my own design and it was actually fun doing this in plaid which appealed to my sense of harmony and structure. The plaid worked like a little ruler and when piecing it together. You'd just match up the pattern of the plaid and stitch.

Timeless Style

The hat is a white straw cloche made on one of PNB's new molds, which I covered in lace, and a pleated band. This was the first time I actually liked the way the collar came out, as  I think I'm getting better at designing them.

 

 

The Illustration

One of the reasons I hesitated in creating the Morning Dress was due to the hue of the white in the fabric.  It was more on the lines of an off white, or an ivory, and none, not one of the laces I had, was this meiling color.  There were only two laces needed.  One for the hat, a very wide lace, and one for the collar.  After seeing how stark these laces looked against this plaid, I decided best to try and dye them.  I had some ivory Fiber Reactive Procion dye (cool bath to use with soda ash), and decided that while I was at it, I'd dye the Swiss batiste so the lace would blend better on the collar.  Well, wouldn't you know!  I over-dyed the pieces.  I was beside myself calculating the cost of my mistake, and dumped them in a bowl of bleach and water.  I don't know if bleach has changed that much over the years, but it didn't seem to bleach out the dye, but a tad.  Oh, I did try again, but then the new pieces of lace and fabric wouldn't pick up the dye at all!  So I decided to use what I had.  Besides, I'd already covered one of the halves of the Peter Pan collar and it was perfect.  Why waste a perfect collar?

Mock up of the bodice and collar.

 

To make this all work together, I decided to keep blending the whites for an overall shade of off white.  I used the oldest mother-of-pearl buttons I had, and used the large lace over white Swiss straw for the hat.  I think the overall effect came out much softer and antique-y looking.  

 

The layout.

I have to admit that I did not have much trouble creating this dress since similar pleats were done on an earlier outfit, and the waistband was attached the same way the ribbon was to the waist of the Violin Concert dress.  One thing I did new, and tried with this dress, was a machine hem. I'd recently bought a new dress that had a deep hem and was machine stitched.  It worked, looked great, so why not try it on a doll's dress?  Boy-oh-boy!  The time it saved!  It was also easy to do since I was following the line of the top of a blue plaid band.  I'd always heard plaid was hard to work with, matching up the plaid and all that, but this was the best part of piece.  I'm satisfied with this one!

 

One sleeve like the other.

What's Next!

The next thing I'll be trying is working with interlock cotton knit to make a "sweater".  This little fall outfit will be made in two sizes.  One for the Bleuette sized doll, and one for the 18" doll.  I do think I've plenty of fabric to make one for my own Big Lettie, so I guess I'll be making three. 

 

I'm feeling the need to make a cup of tea and put my whiskers in a good book right now.  I promised myself when summer began, that I would enjoy the simple pleasures and every single day, and not work myself to the bone.  So far, so good. 

 

Love,

Miss E. Mouse









Time for Fall.

Lemon Meringue Pie and The Petit Four

Lettie Lane's Violin Concert Dress

The Illustration by Sheila Young

Its been a long, hot summer so far.  I've been spending most of my days in my little hole in the wall designing and sewing.  It truly has been at least a week since I completed Lettie Lane's Violin Concert Dress, and I've been trying to catch up on a few things around the place since.  Lettie Lane's slip set proceeded this, and only one of these were made.  I have every intention of making a second Violin Concert dress for my own Lettie some day, but this one was a bear, and I needed to finish the one to begin on the school clothing.


A Side View

Both of these were entirely too difficult to do, and yet, what I learned from designing them, and constructing them, will take me further into exploring what can be acheived.  I call them the Lemon Meringue Pie and the Petit Four.  Four because of the four different French cotton laces used and the layers of everything.  Lemon meringue...well so very obvious!


A Detail with Forget-Me-Knots

If I try to think of the two things that gave me the most concern with the Violin Concert Dress, I'll have to say the ruffles and the ruffles!  No longer will I call myself the Ruffle Queen.  I've much still to learn about ruffles.  And, believe it or not, this neckline is not completely gathered, and was a difficult to acheive as any preceding collar.  Before the gathered, double ruffle went on, seven tiny pleats went into the neckline from the center out.  The gathers were just from the back of the neckline to the pleats.  All hidden under the collar, but the line theshape of the neckline could not be acheived otherwise.  I tried it completely gathered, and it looked like a clown costume.  I just about gave up.  But, then we know I never give up!

Ha-ha!  And, there was also the stitching of the silk ribbons to the edges of the silk that would be gathered into ruffles.  It was quite tedious work to stitch the first edge of ribbon to the turned under edge of the ruffle band.  The second row of stitching was much easier since the first edge was sewn down already.  The ribbon along the waist band is hand sewn on.  It is not a belt that ties in a bow, but a part of the dress itself.  I was somewhat disappointed that this thin and lovely lemon silk ribbon stiffened the edges of the ruffles when stitched on, but it could not be helped.  I'll repeat that there is so much more an illustrator can do than a seamstress.

The fun of this dress is that it is lovely to hold.  It almost has a life of its own, like a flouncy puppet!  I adore it, and I'd really love to have one for myself, but this is how I make my money.  sigh  Naturally we needed a violin to finish the look, so I purchased a small, 7" Stradivarius for the ensemble!

Lettie Lane's Slip Set is definitely one-of-a-kind.  Its hard to describe what I did to make the chemise, so I will let the photos tell the story.  I will tell you that tiny buttons holes were not meant to be machined onto heirloom batiste!  The fabric is so thin that the buttons and holes would simple tear through in time.  Line the waistband?  This is a for a doll.  The lighter and softer the feel and look, the more authentic it is.  I was asked to do this not as something to be worn under a dress, but as an outfit to be displayed on the doll by itself.  Of course it would then need accessories, so I procured a porcelain wash bowl and pitcher, and monogrammed a wee towelette.

September is but a month away, and the call for plaid clothing is ringing in the school bells.  I love the seasons.  We mark our time by rituals and the changes of the season throughout the year.  Fall is always my favorite, but I have to admit that I have thoroughly enjoyed our spring and summer this year through this little girl I'm dressing, Lettie Lane.

P.s.  Good news!  Polly Pratt is on her way here!!!

Love,
Miss E. Mouse