This doll and dress were made in the 1980s, which was, generally speaking, not a very good decade for MA dolls, in my humble opinion. I am a big fan of many Madame Alexander dolls, because they are usually high quality and have excellent design. But dolls and clothing from that decade have not held up as well as many other MA dolls. This dress came on a doll about 13" tall, made of vinyl in sort of a chubby toddler body, with a wide waist and very small neck.
Anyway, I have had this dress stored away for a while. I liked the black vest with criss-crossed laces, and I liked the overskirt. I thought it might be used by my vintage Madame Alexander Maggie-face 14" hard plastic doll, if the dress could be refurbished.
The fabric was faded from whatever color it originally was (gray? silver? pale blue?) to a non-descript tone. The elastic had stretched out on the sleeves. There were stains on the dress. And the "collar" was an ugly piece of lace.
So today was makeover day. First, a trip to the store for the essential makeover supplies for this project.
I chose a royal blue dye because the black velvet vest would not be affected by blue dye. Besides, I love this color!
I heated a large pot of salt water, mixed in the dye, immersed the dress, and stirred for about twenty minutes. Then I rinsed the dress multiple times in cold water until the rinse water was clear. I gently patted out most of the water with white paper towels. Then the dress was hung on a plastic hanger to dry, while I ran errands.
Later in the day, once the dress was dry, I tackled the "unstitching" part of the project. With a seam ripper, I removed the stretched-out elastic from the sleeves, the ugly lace from the collar, and the snaps at the neck and waist of the dress. This was a bit boring, but I have a bright adjustable worklight that eases eyestrain, and I did it in steps as needed, which broke up the tedium of taking out stitches.
I tried stitching elastic on one sleeve the same way the dress was made originally. However, the elastic stretched out too much while sewing it on. So, once again, a bit of unstitching. Scratch Plan A for sleeves.
Plan B was to form a placket to hold some round elastic. White sewing, I was careful not to catch the elastic in the needle. This worked just fine. Then the white trim was sewn onto the sleeve on the outside. To assure a proper fit, I put the sleeve on the doll's arm at the widest point and tightened the elastic to fit and tied a knot to hold it in place. The last step on the sleeve was to restitch the underarm sleeve.
Then the whole process was repeated for the other sleeve. Maggie waited patiently through this whole process. One nice thing about sewing for dolls, is that they do not complain much. (They do whine and wheedle some, though.)
For the neck, I gathered a piece of the white trim to fit the neckline, then carefully stitched it in place at the edge of the neck.
The white trim was added to the edge of both skirts.
It was time to reattach the snaps. I had a bit of a challenge here. The snaps were quite small and black. Two different times I dropped a snap on the floor. They were almost impossible to see, and I got some exercise on my hands and knees searching for them. I did find them at last and sew them in place on the dress.
The sewing part was done and the dress needed pressing. The fabric seemed to be at least partly acrylic, which will scorch easily, so I used a low heat/high steam setting.
Finally, Maggie was dressed in the refurbished dress, with the addition of a petticoat, white stockings, and black shoes (all of which she had in her trunk).
Doll Dress Makeover -- the Reveal!
(Maggie liked the dress, by the way.)
Love how you are able to take something and make it beautiful!
ReplyDeleteStacey
When I saw the original dress, I though "how plain! What can be done with that?"
ReplyDeleteWow, you did a wonderful job! The remade dress is gorgeous.