Flower power Hippie time - Part 1, The clothes

From the 20s to the 60s it's quite a time jump, I know. I can't even remember how I decided that I wanted to make a Hippie outfit, I just knew I wanted something completely different from the Flappers this time.
And different it is.

Francie, our lovely doll model this time, is from the Malibu series and was produced from 1971 to 1977. Instead of the regular Francie head she has the smiling Casey head.
This Malibu Francie had seen a very bad hairdresser, one who was even worse than me. He left her with a bunch of bristles on her head instead of a hairdo. Unfortunately that was at a time when I had given up on re-rooting after a few attempts to try other things instead, so Francie spent her life hidden on a shelf behind the door.
Then I re-found her, so-to-speak, and thought she would make a wonderful flower child with her happy smile.

Francie has yet another figure compared to the first two dolls. She is smaller than Barbie - whose cousin she is, by the way - and not as curvy, so I had to make a completely new pattern regarding the arm holes and the straps.

First I made the top. I went browsing tie-dye shirt images on the net and went for a swirly rainbow kind of design. I loomed front and back in once piece, re-wove the threads, sewed up the sides, and then I went totally overboard making a long fringe.

Next came the "leather" vest in a mix of two of my favorite brown bead colors. Other than the top the vest is removable. It has fringe around the top of the arm holes.

I took quite a long break before I tackled the skirt. All I knew was that I wanted to have some kind of denim color, that it was going to be long and wide and that I wanted to pick up the rainbow motif again.
Finally I decided to make it in four parts and sew them together. I used red thread for this to imitate decorative seams.
This was the hardest part. The all-blue parts were pretty boring to loom and instead of going faster because they were easier they almost destroyed my motivation. Joining the parts was okay, but then I had to decrease the top to make the skirt fit on Francie's waist.
At that point I knew it would have been smarter to make the skirt first. The fringe of the top kept getting in my way big time. With gritted teeth and lots of eyerolling I finally got it done.

Then I had the idea for a wide belt in brick stitch. The only problem was what to use for a buckle.
I didn't find a real buckle, but then I had another idea. Yup, sometimes they just roll in like that.
I took one of my toggle clasps and clipped off the little loop. Not bad, eh?

Now I had a complete outfit and only needed some more accessories ... and hair. That's what I am going to tell you about next time.