Ms Dawn is going out

Ms Dawn is going out and she's not wearing a mask. Dawn is in the 20s - the previous century's decade, that is, not her 20s and not the 20s of our century.
Dawn may be born in the 70s, but she doesn't care. She's a Flapper at heart and she demanded that I took her golden and hot pink dress off and gave her something a little more elegant. She became my "Mini Flapper" (compared to Flapper Barbie and Flapper Christie) and this is the story how.
If you please, you may imagine the following read to you in the manner of an announcer at a fashion show.

Ms Dawn's sleeveless dress is worked in the peyote technique in a subtle combination of dusty pink and grey with a hint of silver shimmer in both. It goes up all the way in the back and features a rectangular neckline in the front.
At the bottom seam it is finished with a small fringe.
Pink blossoms accented with a small center bead are generously scattered all over the dress except in the upper part of the back.

For jewelry she has chosen a classic and unobtrusive long necklace from clear beads that she is wearing sideways. She has refrained from adding any more jewelry on this occasion so as to not take attention off her outfit at all.

The headband that picks up the flower embellishment of the dress is perfect with the slightly windswept look of Ms Dawn's bob. Unfortunately she wouldn't share the secret with us how she manages to tame her full hair, but we suspect that the lovely grey headband makes up a big part of it.

A night out is impossible without wearing an elegant evening cloak. Ms Dawn's choice is this custom made model matching the color of her dress perfectly. It is bead loomed and has a high peyote collar. The hems are embellished with small clear accent beads for a sophisticated look.

These fashionable sandals too are designed to match the colors of the outfit. For a better fit on the foot they have small pink straps. With sandals as comfortable as these Ms Dawn will have no problems to dance the night through if she so desires.

An accessory that can't be missed is a purse, big enough to hold the most important things for a night in the city. At the last minute Ms Dawn has chosen this cute little drawstring pouch that matches her outfit instead of a silver clutch that her friend suggested because she can just hang it from her wrist.

And here's our Flapper now, waiting for her friends at the big cat sculpture.
Thank you for joining us and we hope to welcome you again to our next fashion show at La Maison Cat!
Enjoy your night as our Ms Dawn no doubt will, too.

Dawn was a registered trademark of the Topper Company. I am not affiliated with Topper in any way.

The Great Flapper or How Christie got a new outfit - Part 3, Jewelry and shoes

Welcome back to Christie's story!
This time I am going to tell you about her jewelry and her shoes.

Actually the jewelry was the easiest part to do in the whole project.
I knew I wanted to give her long necklaces, so I just had to look in my stash if I had beads in the right colors that I could use with the seed beads. As it so happens, I had green and yellow crystals. In fact I tried all-crystal necklaces first, but I didn't really love them and after getting a no on that from my personal advisor as well, I went for a combination of crystals and seed beads. That was much better, also because the necklaces sit better that way.

In my stash were also smaller crystals in green, so I made a little chain stitch bracelet with them, and just look at that big stone she's wearing on her finger!
Newer dolls often have a hole in their hand where the ring is missing, so I had to cover that up.

I felt that dangly earrings would not go well with the fringe on the headpiece, so even if I love them, I settled for simple golden studs instead which are headpins that I put in the ear holes.

Christie's makeover was almost finished, how exciting! Little did I know how long she still had to wait.
I have big feet, but I don't have as many problems to find shoes as this lady.
There aren't that many Supersize outfits and the shoes are even harder to find individually. When I missed out on the one pair I found for sale, I had to figure out something else.

My first thought was polymer clay. Maybe I could make the soles from clay and bead the top. I had some old clay and decided on a dry run. I put Christie's feet on some paper and drew the outlines, cut out the templates, pressed them onto the clay and started cutting around.
I believe in recycling and have paper scraps around for notes, my to do lists, and stuff like this. I have a tip for you. Don't use paper with a tax return form printed on it. The print will end up on the clay. Of course it will. Doh. After all this was only a dry run, though, so it didn't matter.
I lightly pressed the soles onto Christie's feet for the shape. That didn't look too bad for a first try. I put them into my toaster oven and waited when I suddenly heard a weird sound. I can't even describe what the soles had turned into. It was a burnt and gooey mass with bubbles. I have no idea if it had been the oven that hadn't been used in a while - although I did wipe all the dust off - or the old clay or both. Time and temperature had been right. Oh well.

I had to get some new clay and use the other oven.
I had been optimistic after making the new soles, things didn't quite work out the way I wanted them to. I had my soles which had kept the shape of the feet pretty well, I had the heels, now I just needed to come up with an idea for the top.
Poor Christie leaned against the wall for weeks. My next doll project, still without head then, kept her company while receiving one garment after the other. They were an odd pair and a little sad to look at.

Finally I knew it was now or never. I sat down with my clay, the soles and Christie and tried to mold a shoe onto her foot that I could get off afterwards. Don't forget that again I had a whole doll attached to that foot, too. As Christie's waist is a little loose, she moved and wriggled a lot during the process. The lady has no patience at all!
I tried and tried, and when one thing worked, the other went wrong. The thought of having to do the same for the other foot drove me to take drastic measures. I broke the soles in two and tossed them.
But now what?
I can't believe it took me that long to realize that I could knit the shoes from wire and beads. T-strap shoes with a wire crochet heel. See, sometimes I just need time to come up with something!

And here she is now, in our 20s inspired hallway where she took up residence (no way she would have fit into my doll cabinet). Every time I come out of my flat, she makes me smile standing there and smiling at me.

You have missed the first two posts? Find them here!
Part 1, The Dress
Part 2, The headpiece

Will you be back for my next doll project? It's very different from the first two, but was just as much fun (and there were no shoe problems at all!).

The Great Flapper or How Christie got a new outfit - Part 2, The headpiece

Let's jump right in, okay? Today is about Christie's head.
 
Vintage dolls have a neck knob which allows you to move the head sideways. There are smaller and bigger ones and cone shaped ones and whatnot.
Later dolls got neck knobs which allowed to also tilt the head, make it look up or down, this is the kind Christie has.
Out there in the net you can find much more information on the subject and also on the subject of the dreaded neck split and what's the best way to behead a doll. A little hint, it is NOT the guillotine.

Again, I am not a doll artist meaning I have the patience to do repairs of all kind, replace limbs, heads, re-paint faces or more. I try my best to avoid some procedures if possible, and one of them is taking a head off a doll if not absolutely necessary.
As a child I was cooler about that. We had outfits that were impossible to put on a doll if you didn't take her head off first. Yes, my Stacey does have a neck split, but she also has a yellow face and one finger and half a foot are missing. You can tell she was a beloved and played with toy. I'm digressing, sorry.

Have you ever seen a Barbie doll which looks like she doesn't have a neck? She probably had one of those newer neck knobs, maybe even the ones with prongs. My sister and I have seen more than one of those. If a child pulls on one of the heads on such a knob, the neck can break and the knob part comes off. If you put the head back on, it's right on the neck instead the knob. We call them "no-neck monsters" after a quote from "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof".

After all the work with the dress *looking at Ponder who is trying to clean up around his food plate* I didn't want to risk Christie to become a no-neck monster.
A hair cut was out of the question, too. I didn't have a replacement head in case anything went wrong.
And honestly, the copper streaks didn't look very 20s to me, either.
So all that I could do was to put something on her head that had the touch of the 20s, but hid all her hair.
I chose to knit a wire headpiece because knitted wire is flexible enough to shape it if needed. I used golden wire and the bright green beads to pick up the colors from the dress.
The last rows were a little difficult because I had to knit them with the headpiece already on the head, so I could decrease. Not that easy with the whole doll attached to it, I can tell you.

The wire knit "flower" with the crystal center was easier to make, but a bit fiddly to put on. I used the dark teal beads for it to have some contrast.
I had still some peacock feather leftovers. What was funny is that they arranged themselves when I pulled the flower tight. I wish all components would be that cooperative!
Last but not least I added a fringe at the bottom to match the fringe on the dress and voilà!

The last post will be about the jewelry and about big feet. Not Bigfoot, big feet! Just wait and see.

Have you missed the first post? Here it is:
Part 1, The dress

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

The Great Flapper or How Christie got a new outfit - Part 1, The dress

A while ago I showed you my first Barbie doll project with a bead loomed outfit and promised you more.
Here I am now to tell you the story of Christie.
Think big this time.
In 1976 the only 18 inch Barbie doll was released. She had the new superstar face and wore a white and silver dress. In 1978 she came out in a bridal version and in 1979 she had super hair which could grow and be curled.
1977 was the year for Supersize Christie. Christie was an African American doll. She had long brown hair with copper streaks and wore a dusty pink and silver dress.

My Christie's story started at a fleamarket. I don't remember if she wore anything at all at the time or what I paid for her, but it can't have been much.
She was not in mint condition. Her hair was matted and had two little braids in front, her earrings and ring were missing, she had definitely been played with.
If she had something on which I threw away or if she had been naked from the start, fact is that she spent years in a drawer. I don't know if I had hoped to stumble upon an outfit or if I actually planned making something for her, but every time I went through that drawer, I felt her reproachful gaze upon me.
When my Flapper project worked out, the chance to make it up to her was there.
With the experience I had gained from "Little Flapper", I would make her into something special. As usual I was a little naive. There IS a difference between 11.5 and 18 inch, and not just in the number of the beads you need.

First I had to take Christie's measurements and design a pattern. Again I measured several times to be absolutely sure there would be no unpleasant surprises, then I started the pattern, first the outline, then the "fabric". I had looked at pictures on the net to get inspired and after several drafts in different colors I decided to use greens and gold.
This time I would have to make two pieces and join them later. The first piece went just fine. I liked the colors, a bright green (although I wanted to use a mint first that was out of stock, however) in combination with dark silver lined teal and gold lined crystal. I loomed it, I took it off, I re-wove, no problem.

Then came the second piece. I finished it and took it off the loom. There are different opinions about what exactly happened next, but the fact is that Ponder and I managed together to pull a warp thread out which of course resulted in a whole column of beads falling out. You have to imagine the feeling after working on this for a few hours, looming and measuring. I can't even describe it. My first impulse was to chuck the whole thing. There was no chance to get those beads back in and the thought of sewing it up anyway and hoping for the best was in my head for merely a few seconds. It wouldn't have worked. The only answer was to *sob* rip it up and sort the beads all over again.
By now I was a nervous wreck. It took me a while until I came back to the loom for the second try. This time I had done about half. Seriously, it was my own fault. I really should know better than to leave the room and let Ponder watch the loom if he is in a mischievous mood. I came back to warp threads ripped off the loom, and I'm not ashamed to say that I freaked out. This project was dead as a dodo. Enough. Sorry, Christie, it was not to be. I tried. At that moment I was so tired of this pattern. I couldn't do it all over again.
Some people say I'm stubborn. Often that's a weakness, but sometimes it's a good thing. After I calmed down, I came back even more determined. Again I ripped and sorted.

Third time's the charm. I finished the piece and started sewing up the sides.
This is the very first picture I took to show my best beady friends how big this doll was, in the background one of my fiercest critics.

After deciding on the exact length I sewed up the straps with accent rows of golden beads and added three rows of the same beads to the back to make sure the dress kept sitting right.
Up to that point about 15,200 beads had gone into this dress. You might have noticed that I didn't use Delicas this time, but seed beads, or there would have been even more.
For the luxurious fringe I used the golden beads and bright green dagger beads.

So this was what Christie looked like now. It was time to think about accessories and what to do about her hair, but that's the story for the next post.

Stay tuned!

P.S. Please forgive the bad pictures. Whenever I'm in the middle of a project, I tend to take pictures at the weirdest times and often in the dark which accounts for the colors not always looking the same, too. I'll make up for it with the last picture, promise!

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 4, The head

I know that it sounds creepy, but it's part of the process if you have a bald or an almost bald head.
I am not a doll artist, I'm not a painter, and I'm not a hair stylist. I prefer if the original face is still good enough to be left alone and it's hard work for me to re-root a Barbie head and give her a nice hairdo.
Again I'm glad to have my sister by my side who not only has good tips, but helps with the hairstyle as well.

Those of you who know vintage Mattel dolls, may have been surprised when I said in the second post that I chose a Midge doll for the project because the head in the picture is not a Midge head. Actually the first head was, but I messed it up gloriously after spending hours of re-rooting, trimming, styling, and re-painting the face. That girl had some heavy makeup on, I can tell you.
I had used the wrong glue to hold the hair strands from inside the head and I dropped the head in water to set the hair. Not the whole head obviously. I'm not sure what happened or what I missed, but my (not so) clever construction had failed miserably when I came back to a head that was swimming in a mix of water and dissolving glue. Quite a gruesome sight.
I am sorry to say that Midge was incredibly sticky afterwards, and I lacked the motivation to try all over again. I started looking for doll heads online.

That's when my sister came to the rescue for the first time. She gave me one of her Ponytail heads with a bad hair day, but good makeup. So I started all over again, only this time I had the right glue and settled for red lips instead of wiping the whole face.
My sister also had the idea to use a mascara brush to style the hair after I had cut it.

There you have it - the whole story of my Flapper Barbie.
I hope you enjoyed it a little because the word obsession in the title may already have told you that I am not done yet. I've licked blood and I don't intend to stop.
What I will do, however, is give you a break. Take a deep breath, I might be back with the next story sooner than you can imagine, and again I hope you'll be there with me.

You can find previous posts here:
Part 1, The introduction
Part 2, The dress
Part 3, The accessories


Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 3, The accessories

As promised last time today's post is all about accessories.

What comes to mind when you think Flapper? Headbands, feathers, long necklaces, earrings, crystals, pearls, shoes, bracelets ....

These shoes were a donation by my sister. I didn't have an extra pair of vintage black heels and many of the modern shoes don't work well on the bigger and harder vinyl feet of the old dolls. Golden instead of silver sprinkles would have been perfect, but not only did they fit, Barbie could also stand in them on her own if you did it right. Of course I use a stand anyway.
To make the shoes more 20s, I sewed on straps from the beads that I had also used in the dress.

I didn't have to go far for the necklaces. In my stash I have tiny beads and pearls. For these four strands in two different lengths I chose black onyx and golden freshwater pearls to pick up the colors in the dress.

For the headband I made a simple brick stitch band and added some decorations.

And once again my sister pulled a rabbit out of her magician's hat ... or rather peacock feathers from an old carnival costume. Of course a whole feather would have been much too big, so I cut one up instead and sewed the parts to the headband.

I felt more would have been too much, so I did without more jewelry. Instead I just re-painted the fingernails and turned my attention the head.
That will be the story for the next post then. I hope I'll see you there again!

If you missed the earlier posts, you can find them here:
Part 1, The introduction
Part 2, The dress


Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 2, The dress

In part 1 of this series of posts I told you a little about how the "Bead loom a Barbie outfit" project got started.
So what was actually the first step?

Even without being a seamstress I know you can't just whip up a dress without some kind of pattern, and you can't make a pattern without having measurements.
Of course first of all I had to pick out the kind of Mattel doll I wanted to work with. I decided on a Straight Leg Midge with serious hair problems that had been waiting for a makeover far too long. I'll come to the head in a later post, though.

Back to the dress.
I wanted to loom it in one piece and then sew it together down the sides. Now that I knew what doll I would use, I could start measuring.
It being my first beaded dress project, I didn't want it to be too difficult, just a basic straight dress with straps, a rounded neckline and a low cut back. Sounds rather easy, doesn't it?
When I started measuring, it didn't seem that easy to me anymore. After all I couldn't keep taking the dress off the loom and try it on, so it had to be right from the beginning.

Barbie's bustline and hips were the basic measurements for the whole dress. As it was to be straight, I had to measure carefully to make sure it would fit around Barbie's body, but still wouldn't be too bulky.
The armholes would have to be big enough, but not so big to allow glimpses into the dress from the sides.
And of course the straps would have to sit just right which also depended on the size of the neckline, the back and the armholes.
To be on the safe side I rather made the pattern a little bigger than smaller. Many of us know the feeling when you want to button up a pair of jeans and there are just millimeters missing. I couldn't take that chance on Barbie, after all I am not that fond of ripping up a project.

After having fiddled with the outlines for many hours and almost obsessive measuring I was finally ready to design the pattern itself, done in black and metallic medium bronze AB which is an absolutely stunning color, inspired by pictures of dresses from the 20s.

Almost 7,700 beads and a few hours later - also due to the fact that I still kept measuring again and again - I could take the dress off the loom and drape it on the doll for the very first time if you can call pulling her head off and putting the dress on with her neck knob standing out between the warp threads draping, that is. Yes, it sounds terrible, but what can you do?
You should heard my sigh of relief when things looked promising!
The next big task was to weave in all of the warp threads, 196 of them to be precise, and to sew up the sides.

Not only was it a dress, but it also fit!!

I felt it needed a little decoration, though. I added two rows of beads in the back. They keep the straps from moving which might reveal just a little too much back.

The three rows of beads over the shoulders make sure the armholes don't open up too much, but mostly I just liked the look of it.
I am sure I'm not the only one who connects the 20s with lots of fringe, but for this dress I opted for a small fringe of dagger beads instead.

Wow. That was a long post, but designing and making the dress was a long process, too. Thank you if you made it all the way through.
Next week's post will be all about accessories (and shorter, I promise)!

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 1, The introduction

To my friends it is not new that I have a small, but sweet vintage Barbie collection (and a bunch of newer ones).
I got my first Mattel doll, a platinum blond Stacey, when I was five, and the story behind that I told in an earlier blog post is not very flattering for me and my behavior at that age. I never thought about starting a collection, however. Barbies and their outfits were just not in my budget.

Then my sister (both of my sisters still have their childhood dolls as well, a TNT Barbie and a red haired Stacey) got the book "Barbie - her life and times" by Billy Boy. The German version came out 1988, and 18 years after Stacey had arrived in my life, I was fascinated by Barbie all over again.
No one would call me a fashion person. Jeans, sneakers, t-shirt - that's me. As much as I don't dress up myself, though, as much I do love the Barbie fashions. Tiny zippers, tiny buttons, 50s and 60s chic, wild mod designs.
And I learned about vintage dolls that I hadn't heard of before, merely because I was too young at that time or not even born yet.

Not that much later we were at a fleamarket and having studied the book paid off when I found a bendable leg Midge. Not mint in condition, but at an absolutely fantastic price. That's when my collection started. I got more dolls, I started buying the most important price guides, I learned more about Barbie's history and about her German predecessor, the Bild Lilli, and dreamed of owning a #1 Barbie one day.
 
I can't sew. I don't crochet with yarn. I had never made any Barbie outfits that could even be called outfit. When I started working with wire, however, I had to try and crochet wire dresses for Barbie. The problem was what to use as an undergarment because wire crochet dresses tend to be see through. Although I finished a few, I was not happy enough with them to pursue that.

Then I started bead looming and the idea to loom Barbie dresses kept running through my head. At an early stage I made a tote bag for one of my Francie dolls.
We all know that Barbie has curves, lots of curves. How could I loom something without the curves being a problem?
That's when I had the idea to make a Flapper outfit.

This post is just the introduction to the story of Barbie, tiny glass beads, fringe, shoes, peacock feathers, Ponder (one of my cats, for those who don't know), Christie, Francie, and a new obsession.
The story is too much for just one post, so stay tuned if you want to follow the journey. I'd love to take you with me.

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.