Biscuit's House

Dress pattern

Sorry I've been remiss in replying to comments, I have strep throat and have been quite under the weather since last week, but please keep them coming!

Here's the pattern for Chandrakala's dress, in case anyone has a doll from Marina and wants to make a dress for her (sounds quite remote a possibility). It's not perfect but the fit is quite good, I was able to sew everything by machine except when attaching the sleeves to the bodice. Better use a thin fabric as the skirt is quite full and must be tightly gathered.

Here are the pattern pieces, I added a scale so you can adjust the printing size (inches on the left and cm on the right) :

The bodice front and neck lining are cut on a fold. The seam allowance is included and is mentioned on each pattern piece in mm (1 inch = 25.4 mm).
For the skirt cut a 23 cm x 61.4 cm piece.
I used a very thin kind of fabric so instead of doing a zigzag type of stitch along raw edges, I applied a narrow line of Fray Check with a very small brush.

Rough instructions :

- Sew the darts on the bodice front
- Sew the shoulders of back and front bodice together
- Lay the  whole bodice flat, right side up, baste gathered lace all around the neckline, lay the neck lining piece on top, baste again and sew the 3 layers together ; turn the neck lining to the inside of the bodice
- Hem and attach lace to each sleeve bottom, sew sleeve tops to armholes (by hand)
- Close the sleeves and the sides of the bodice
- Hem (8 mm) and attach lace to the bottom of the skirt
- Run gathers along the top of the skirt, baste to the bodice, and sew together
- Sew back sides of skirt together up to opening, turn back seam allowance of back bodice and back side of skirt down to opening on each side, and machine-stitch in place
- Make 3 thread button loops on one side and sew 3 buttons on the other side.

And here are photos of the second hat, it looks better than the salvaged one.

How to make a Barbie size (or bigger) doll's straw hat

Sorry about the photos, I did most of this at night.

The only thing you need to buy to make this is a bundle of hat straw. In the US you can order from The PNB Doll Company ($9 for a 10 yard bundle, 1/4" wide), in Europe from Gildebrief (19,90€ for a 10 meter bundle, 4,5 mm wide). The rest of the materials can be found in your home.

The particularity of this straw braid is that on each side, there is a string which you can pull in order to make the braid fit any curve. Here's a photo to illustrate what I mean.

Find a box or other cylindrical object with the desired diameter for your finished hat. Cut a circle in card stock of the same size, put it on top of the box, cover with plastic wrap and hold the film in place with an elastic. Glue a PET bottle cap of the same size as your doll's head in the center of the plastic wrap.

You can adapt this method to bigger dolls by using various kinds of plastic caps.

Cut a strip of double-sided tape, about 1/4 to 1/3" wide, and press it all around the outer edge of the film-covered card stock, so that it lays flat in a circle on the top of the box.

With a needle, pick up the string on the side of the straw braid which will be facing inside, and pull on it in order to make the braid fit the curve. Then press the first row of straw on top of the tape.

Next, pour white tacky glue into the corner of a small Ziploc bag, tie the corner tightly with a piece of string or wire, and cut a very tiny hole at the tip of the corner, so that you can press out a very small bead of glue while holding the corner of the bag with your fingers. Deposit a small amount of glue all around the inner edge of the first row.

Press the second row of braid over the first one, in a concentric circle, so that it overlaps about half the width of the braid. Continue in this way until you've reached the top of the cap. Don't forget to pull on the inner string when needed in order to make the braid fit the curves. As the circles become smaller and smaller you will need to pull more often on the string.

Each time you've securely glued in place a section of braid with the string pulled out, you can cut the string close to the edge of the braid just before glueing the next row over it.

When you reach the junction with the bottle cap, press the edge with your fingernails to make the braid follow the shape of your hat "mold".

To finish, when you only have a small hole left open at the very top, simply cut the braid, fold it over itself and glue it in the center.

Let dry overnight and remove from the mold. If you wish to decorate the brim, pick up one of the thick strands of straw in the braid, and pull on it. The braid will "gather" itself and look like ricrac.

Glue the straw ricrac all around the brim edge. Here's the finished hat seen from above.

And here's the hat seen from inside.

if you wish to shape the hat, place it on top of the PET bottle whose cap you used, with the cap on the bottle, secure it in the desired shape by taping a piece of string to the sides of the bottle, and steam the hat by holding it above a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. Let dry.

Trim the hat according to your tastes. I wanted to keep this one relatively simple so for the inside I just glued ribbon trim all around the inner edge of the brim.

I glued ribbon around the crown and hid the junction with a small ribbon bow. At first I added a bunch of flowers on the side, but decided they didn't look good. It seems to me flowers look good on the side of a hat with a rounded top but not when the top is flat. Well, live and learn. I ripped the flowers off and in order to hide the glue stain where they had been glued a bigger ribbon bow. If you like you can also add ribbon ties glued either to the inside or the outside of the hat, tying either in front or in back.

Voilà! I hope someone will find this useful and if you try it, I'd love to see photos.

Update : here are photos of a hat the talented Diane made using this tutorial, and bigger objects to make her mold. Diane's doll has a head circumference of about 6-7 inches.

(photos posted with Diane's permission)

Masterpiece part IV

Well the masterpiece is finished...unfortunately I can't take photos that do it any justice. It's not perfect, but I think it's the best thing I ever made.

All that was left today was to decorate the exterior, using paper and ribbon trim, embossed golden decorations, vintage paper, and old-fashioned illustrations.

For the lid, I covered thick drawing paper shapes with paper, and spray glued them together and to the lid. When covering cardboard or card stock with paper, make sure that you have sprayed enough glue, and flatten immediately with a credit card or rolling tool, this way you will avoid unsightly air bubbles.

The edges of the rectangle and of the oval will be hidden later, so no need to fold the paper to the back side, I just cut it flush with the edges.

For the embossed key hole, I used white tacky glue, for all the other decorations (including the ribbon trim), my two Xyron sticker makers according to size.

 

If you want to make presentation boxes too, the Bible is Gildebrief issue N°3 of the year 2000. All necessary materials can be bought in the Gildebrief online shop. 

Another project I'd never have completed, tackled or even dreamed I could possibly do myself, were it not for Gildebrief...

Masterpiece part III

You thought I had given up, didn't you? Fooled you! I've been working on it secretly.

First, a padded panel for the lid. I cut a cardboard rectangle and lightly glued two layers of wadding on it using spray glue.

Then I cut a piece of pink cotton satin a few centimeters larger than the carboard on each side, lightly glued it over the wadding with the spray glue, pulled the fabric over to the back and glued it with white tacky glue. The thing here is to pull hard and as regularly as possible so that the fabric is stretched taut on the front side without any wrinkles. The small comb on the photo was just put there to allow the camera to focus when taking the photo. 

Next, I glued white and gold paper lace all around the front of the panel using a Xyron machine ; and elastic fabric trim on the back side using white tacky glue.

The back of the panel isn't pretty but it won't show. 

Next, I threaded thin silk ribbon through the fabric where it will be needed later, spread liquid neoprene glue on the whole surface of the inside lid using a wide brush with hard bristles, and pressed the panel over it.

Then I made the removable panels for the bottom of the box.

For each removable panel, I made two pieces : a padded panel made of thick cardboard, wadding and fabric as for the lid panel, and a thinner cardboard piece covered with paper. Here it's important to check that each carboard piece fits in its compartment in the box bottom with a millimeter or two to spare before covering it, and to check that the two pieces of each removable panel are exactly the same size.

Glueing the fabric on the back of a padded panel.

The removable panels were also decorated with white and gold paper lace. Don't even think of using glue for this - it would be time consuming and most probably would make a mess. Use a Xyron sticker maker, the small one is not expensive. I use it all the time, for hats, acessories, even clothes (doll clothes of course).   

Before glueing the two sides of each removable panel together, glue ribbon loops to the back side of one of the pieces. Without these loops, it would be very hard to remove the panels from the box bottom.

The finished panels - I glued the pieces together with liquid neoprene glue.

The panels in their compartments in the bottom of the box - see how the ribbon loops can be grabbed to remove them from the box.

The inside of the box is now finished.

Continued here.

From Biscuit's Millinery

Two days ago, wigs I had ordered for one of my more recent dolls arrived in the mail. One of the three colors I chose suits her particularly well, but the shape of the wig cap is not exactly right for her head and creates a kind of hump on the crown of her head. So on a whim I decided to make a hat for her to wear with this wig and to hide the hump.

First, if you want to make a straw hat, I strongly advise you to buy the issue N°3/2001 of Gildebrief pictured below. This issue has detailed explanations on how to make and trim the hats, photos, diagrams etc. It can be bought in the online shop as well as the hat forms in several sizes, the straw in many colors, and the glue. I have also used hat forms from another online shop which come with instruction sheets, but I'm sure I wouldn't have managed if I hadn't had the experience of making a Gildebrief hat first.

Pictured below are some of the many hats featured in the issue.

   

The first step is to apply a narrow band of double-faced adhesive tape all around the brim of the hat form.   

The first row of braid is then pressed on top of the tape. The secret of this braid is that on each edge, there is a thread running through the braid. By pulling on this thread, you can make the braid bend to fit the curve of each row.

Then the following rows are glued, each over the last one. Basically that's it - a waxed papier mâché hat form, braid with a gathering thread, and glue. If I had to hand-sew together row after row of straw with tiny stitches, you can be sure I'd never have made a single straw hat in my whole life. I use white craft cement glue, pushed into the corner of a small clear plastic bag, whose edge is then cut a very little. You have to deposit a bead of glue just below the upper edge of the braid all around the row. I don't worry if I use too much glue, it dries clear anyway, so even if you've squeezed too much glue out of the bag, it won't be noticeable.

Once you've worked your way up to the join between the brim and the crown, you leave the end of the braid to dangle and start glueing rows from the other end of the bundle of braid, no longer in a spiral but in concentric circles, cutting the braid each time.

Then you pick up the dangling end of the braid and finish the crown, using the lines on the hat form as a guide, as explained in the Gildebrief.

Voilà! The finished hat. Nice, huh? I still can't credit it myself. I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I completed a straw hat. It takes a bit of time and attention, but it's really not difficult, thanks to the hat forms and detailed instructions. I strongly admire Karin Buttigieg (the person behind Gildebrief). Anything she turns her attention to, she can do (another such person is Fancyboots). Porcelain dolls and ornaments, shoes, clothes, wigs, hats, boxes, handmade buttons, artificial flowers, furniture...you name it, she makes it. I'm surprised that there don't seem to be that many people who know her and Gildebrief in doll circles - she surely is very well-known in the antique doll reproduction world, but all the great patterns and projects in Gildebrief can be used for modern dolls as well. Each issue is packed with ideas and inspiration. It will be a sad loss when she retires.

Let dry overnight, and remove the hat from the hat form the next day. The Gildebrief hat forms are waxed so even if some glue has seeped through the braid onto the form, they don't stick. The inside of the hat looks like this :

That was the easy part. Now come the difficulties : I find lining the hat particularly hard, so I always look for shortcuts and search through my stash for trims and bits and pieces which will make the job easier and cut down a step or two of the process. Here I used a remnant of a pleated trim which I bought years ago in Japan in an old-fashioned fabric shop in Fukui -  a real Ali Baba's cavern, with display cases full of laces and trims in dim recesses of the shop's top floor. By the way, I love the way bits and pieces I bought a long time ago often find their perfect use years later for one project or another ; just as if they were destined for it and had been waiting all this time like Sleeping Beauty waiting for her prince to wake her. Kinds of justifies the existence of The Stash! Anyway, I gathered the top edge of the trim (just above the pink ribbon) and then stitched it into a tube. No way I was going to sew the lining to the inside of this tiny hat, so after glueing a circle of moiré ribbon to the bottom of the crown with a Xyron machine, I just put a lot of glue on the wrong side of the pink ribbon (with a toothpick and the same glue I used for the straw braid) and pressed very firmly. I then glued the other edge of the trim to the first row of braid on the hat rim. Lining finished!

For the outside decoration, I cut a circle of point d'esprit lace, applied a few dots of white glue around the edge, and pressed the edge down with my fingers around the crown. I hid the raw edge by glueing ready-made ribbon trim all around.

Then came the really tricky part - the ribbon ties. Two pairs of hands are better when doing this kind of thing so I enlisted hubby's help. For each side of the hat, I prepared a looped bow with 3 loops on each side. Each bow was then tied in its middle with a third length of ribbon, which runs around the back of the hat. Practice the knots first - you want the tails to face the same way on each side of the hat, and use a vanishing ink pen to mark the desired position of the knots on the third piece of ribbon. Cut the tails to the same length as the bow loops, leaving one long tail on each side to tie the hat. Finish with a few flowers to decorate the brim.

Here's the hat on the doll. Pretty, no? Even if I say so myself! 

   

       

Masterpiece part II

After checking the fit and adjusting where necessary, the inside walls are covered with patterned paper. I have found a credit card or telephone card more useful to smooth creases and flatten the paper than the rolling tool.

The bottom of the box will be rarely seen but for a clean finish I made a bottom panel out of thinner carboard and covered it with pink paper.

The box with the bottom panel and one inside wall in place. I hadn't planned adding the golden bands on the sides but made the decision after noticing a small gap on one side  between the edge of the bottom panel and the edge of the box, which wouldn't have been completely hidden by the side wall.

The fabric hinge has been covered with paper and a ribbon glued to one side so that the box can be kept open with the lid at an angle. 

At this point, glue stains are my enemy. Even using spray glue and a Xyron machine as much as possible, I can't avoid them completely. The pink bottom of the box will normally be covered but I have added decorations to hide small glue stains. For the middle panel, I have glued 2 pieces of cardboard together for added strength. I didn't make the extra effort to match the placement of the green motifs on all the inside walls. Maybe next time...

I have added the small golden decorations at the front edges to hide the fact that the pink paper edges didn't match perfectly and the wood was showing a little ; and the thin golden band along the front to hide a small tear in the pink paper which happened as I was gluing the front wall and adjusted its position too late when the glue had already begun to harden. 

Continued here.   

Masterpiece part I

This is going to be my masterpiece...yes...one day.

Most of this is done at night...so, sorry for the bad pics.

A plain wooden box. Hinges and lock have been removed and the wood beneath sanded smooth.

Making a paper template for the box. I did it by folding the paper around the box and marking the folds and cuts with pencil, checking the fit along the way.

The cover for the box. I taped the template above to the pink paper and traced it. The curl of the paper was a nuisance, so after this I rolled the paper the other way first to remove the curl. Afterwards I found a better way to trace the template - I used repositionable spray glue to adhere the template to the pink paper and trace. More convenient and more precise than using tape.   

My spraying installation - a big cardboard box, a layer of brown paper at the bottom. All ready for the spray glue.

The covered box and lid. I used neoprene spray adhesive to glue the pink paper to the wood. Don't use repositionable adhesive, it won't hold!

The hinge is made by gluing a band of fabric which will later be covered by pink paper.

The inside walls are cut from thick cardboard.

Continued here.

How to crochet around entredeux - easy petticoat without a pattern

Entredeux is great to use in crocheted doll clothes, both as a decorative element, and as a way to neaten the waistline. As an added bonus if you begin a skirt, dress or petticoat with an entredeux waist band, you don't even have to follow a pattern. No need for a gauge swatch either!

There are many kinds of entredeux - simple, double, triple, colored, with ribbon threading bars and/or Swiss embroidery in the center, baby entredeux with very small eyelets...

For this petticoat I wanted cream-colored entredeux with eyelets on the bigger side so I used the edging pictured below from my stash.

The first step is to trim one side of the entredeux, cut with fabric scissors close to the eyelets but without cutting into the eyelets themselves. The length of your band should be enough to go around the doll's waist plus a few free eyelets on both ends. 

Next, attach the thread in an eyelet (leave a few eyelets free at the beginning and at the end, you will cut them later on) and crochet into the eyelets as you would into normal crochet stitches. Make one or more stitch per eyelet depending on the thickness of your thread and the size of your eyelets. Here, I crocheted 2 sc per eyelet. 

For the second row, crochet 2 sc (or 2 dc) into each sc of the first row, thus doubling the number of your stitches and creating the fullness of your petticoat. Now all that is left is to sc or dc away row after row until you have reached the desired length. Finally, add a decorative flounce. Here I used a pattern by Doris Thurlow but you can try any crochet edging or border pattern - this site has quite a few.

Now trim the other side of the entredeux.

In the same way as before, attach the thread and crochet into the eyelets. After the first sc row, make a couple of rows in a decorative pattern (here I used just one row of the shell pattern).

Now all that is left to do is to make the vertical buttoning bands on each side of the petticoat. Trim the remining eyelets from one side and crochet into the sc and dc rows. Crochet into the side of the eyelet just as you would into an sc row. Make a couple of rows and break the thread. Do the same on the other side, including a few evenly spaced buttonholes by crocheting 2 stitches into the air (ch2) and skipping 2 stitches before crocheting an sc into the next sc.

Here is the finished petticoat modeled by Fanchette.

Dollmaking from mother to daughter

  Not surprisingly, since she's so often seeing me do it, Puni had been after me for a while to teach her to knit, crochet, sew...basically she wanted to do something with a needle. It started when I was making Taffy, and I gave her a discarded lemon-shaped head to play with. She drew its features with pigma pens (if I had know we'd keep it, I'd have coated the head with Createx first to keep the colors from bleeding). Another lemonhead served as its torso, and then as she clamored for the doll to be finished, I sewed basic leg and arm shapes and gave her some polyfill to stuff them. I attached the arms and legs using elastic thread so they can move up and down.

She made most of the dress herself. She's not six years old yet so I thought we'd start with felt, meaning no hems and no need for a very sharp needle. I told her many times to be very careful with the needle, to move the needle away from herself when pulling thread, and I haven't allowed her to work on the dress when I wasn't near her.

If you want to adapt this dress to your child's doll, it's very easy to do even if you have minimal sewing skills, use a paper towel, drape it on the doll, mark the top, side and bottom edges, remove the towel, draw the shapes and just add a seam allowance on the sides.

I didn't think Puni would be up to learning applique yet, so we used buttons to secure the felt decorations on the dress. Her stitches are still quite wild, but she's been very intent and concentrated, spent a long time stitching in a single sitting, and I'm quite impressed with the result! So without further ado please meet Belle Rose.

Here's how I made her hair. I measured the length from the top of her forehead to the base of her nape : 7 cm. Then I measured the length from the top of her head to her feet : 25 cm. I used a 30 cm high piece of cardboard (anything around 25 cm high would have done) and wound yellow cotton yarn around it a dozen times , cut the loops at the top, and repeated the process until I had lined up the hair on my table up to a height of 14 cm (7 cm x 2).

I have saved a couple of such cardboard pieces  from Amazon boxes and find them handy to make hair loops. Then when all the hair was lined up, I secured it with adhesive tape on both sides of the center,  marked the center line with vanishing pen, then taped the hair to a piece of tissue paper, and sewed the center line on the sewing machine using yellow thread.

Then I removed the tissue paper and tape, folded the hair in 2 horizontally so that its thickness would be doubled, and pinned it on the head.

To sew the hair on the head I used a long needle, insterted the needle in the back of the head, and came up at the center top of the forehead just where the hair begins, leaving a yarn tail in the back. From here hubby is taking the photos so they are out of focus!

Then I sewed the hair along the center part using back stitch, starting and ending with an additional back stitch in order to secure the yarn.

Finally, I pulled both yarn ends and cut them close to the fabric, then rubbed the holes left by the needle with its blunt end in order to make them disappear. All that remains is to braid the hair and trim the ends.

Puni is very happy with her doll, and hopefully when she grows up she'll at least know how to sew buttons. 

 

A bee in her bonnet

I finished Fanchette's hat today. It turned out completely different from what I wanted to make, but doesn't look too bad on her I think. I hate to make swatches,  to try something then "frog" it and start again, to work by trial and error (anyway I'm such a slow crocheter that if I did I'd never finish anything), so I just went with the flow and finished it as well as I could.

It's made entirely from my stash, which is always a Good Thing. I used antique ribbon I bought from Fleur de Lin et Bouton d'Or in Dinan at least 3 years ago (if ever you're in Brittany I recommend this shop very much), and now I understand better why you have to be so careful with antique dolls' clothing that sometimes you can't remove it - this ribbon was fairly fraying under my very hands. The bee was bought at Au bon marché, my favorite Parisian department store. The pattern is below.

I've been so used to seeing Fancette wearing this hat at various stages of completion for the past week, that when I see her now without a hat on I fill like something is very much missing.

This below is my favorite photo of today's shot. Puni brought the candies back from a trip to the supermarket with her father a few days ago. When she showed the package to me I pounced on it and told her she was forbidden to eat the candies until I had taken photos with them. Then I proceeded to hide them which made it easier for her to wait as she completely forgot their existence. They are now all eaten!

I made this hat by turning at the end of each row, and so it has a seam ; but if I made it again I would work in the round, and so I wrote the instructions this way. I used DMC Cebelia n°20 thread and a 1.25 mm hook.

Each row begins with a ch1 and ends by joining to first sc with a slip stitch.

R1 : Make a magic ring with blue thread, ch1, 12 sc in ring, close round with slip stich.
R2 : 2 sc in each sc (24 sc)
R3 : 1 sc in first sc, 2 sc in next sc, repeat until end of row (36 sc)
R4 : 1 sc in each sc
R5 : 1sc in first sc, 2 sc in next sc, repeat until end of row (54 sc)
R6 : 1 sc in each sc
R7 : 18 sc, ch10, skip next 8 sc, sc in next sc, sc, ch10, skip next 8 sc, sc in next sc, sc in last 17 sc
R8 : sc in first 18 sc, 10 sc in ch10, 2 sc, 10 sc in ch10, sc in last 18 sc (58 sc)
R9 : *1 sc in first 2 sc, 2 sc in next sc**, repeat from * to ** 7 times in total, sc in next 8 sc, 1 sc in next 2sc, 2 sc in next sc, sc in next 8 sc, *1 sc in next 2 sc, 2 sc in next sc**, repeat from * to ** 6 times in total (72 sc)
R10 to 13 : 1 sc in each sc
R14 : 1sc in first 3 sc, 2 sc in next sc, repeat until end of row (90 sc)
R15 to 18 : 1 sc in each sc
R19 : 1sc in first 4 sc, 2 sc in next sc, repeat until end of row (108 sc)
R20 : working in front loops only, 1 sc in each sc
R21 : 2 sc in each sc (216 sc)
R22-25 : 1 sc in each sc
R26 : switch to white thread, sc in first sc, *skip 1 sc, 1sc-2dc-1sc in next sc, skip 1 sc, sc in next sc**, repeat until end of row.
Break thread.

First frill :
R1 : working in the free loops left from row 20, on the inside of the hat, attach white thread, 1 sc in each sc
R2 : working in the back loops only, *2 sc in first sc, 3 sc in next sc**, repeat from * to ** until end of row
R3 : sc in first sc, *ch3, skip 1 sc, sc in next sc**, repeat from * to ** until end of row
R4 : *ch3, sc in next ch3**, repeat from * to ** until end of row
R5 : 1sc-2dc-1sc in each ch3.
Break thread.

Second frill : work in the same way as first frill, starting from the free loops left from R2 of the first frill.

Here's a photo of the inside of the hat taken when I was making the first frill, showing the free loops left from row 2 of the first frill.

Let me know if you find any errors!