Polka-dotted Edwardian

At a small fabric and crafts shop, I bought a fat quarter of black material with white polka dots. Though the shop lady though that the scale was off in regards to doll clothing, I thought it would be perfect for Anthea. All I needed was the right design.

Previously I played with the idea of giving Anthea a late Victorian bordering on Edwardian. I even made a petticoat and bought some fabric for the dress. I found a pattern I could enlarge and everything. However, I decided that her wardrobe was already full to bursting and I scrapped the plan. And then I found a 1905 Bleuette pattern and decided to make an Edwardian cut dress with the polka dots fat quarter.

A new petticoat was in order. I made one using the skirt portion of my enlarged pattern and put it multiple pintucks for stiffness. It is not a pretty thing, which is why I won't show it, but it gets the job done. I found the old petticoat and wanted to use that, but it's too full and too long to fit under the dress.

For the dress itself, I didn't have enough fabric from the quarter to make the whole thing, so I used some scraps of solid black to make the cuffs and ruffle. The ruffle is my favorite part. the idea is clever, using clusters of pintucks to gather the fabric. Alas, I gut the fabric too long, so to get it to fit the hem, I needed to add more tucks, so you don't really see the little groups.

I feel it's a fairly plain dress, but more or less concurrently with it, I enlarged a pattern for a detachable collar and set to embroidering it. Like many projects, it sat around uncompleted for a long time. When I finally finished the dress, I realized it could use some dressing up, so I finally got around to completing the collar.