New frontiers in dressmaking

Because of my doll's seated position, making her bloomers presented a challenge in spatial and architectural thinking / construction. Susanna Oroyan, doll-making maven, writes in one of her books that it is wise to put underwear on your dolls, because everyone invariably upends your doll to see what they have on their bottoms. And it's true, they do! 
To make all the underwear my dolls are endowed with, whether it is period or not, I am cutting up a set of vintage linen napkins and their tablecloth, kindly donated to the dollmaking cause by a generous friend. In a way, this underwear is in period, since it is made from linen, but up until the 1800's people didn't really wear underwear as we know it. They just wore shifts/shirts and not much on the bottom, if anything.
After puzzling over how to make the crotch for the bloomers, I cut a generous seat seam in the linen, sewed up the legs and then fitted them on and sewed the rest of the seams in their places, right on the doll. Without any stretch to the linen, I was obliged to give the bloomers a waistband to keep them from falling off around the waist.

Not too shabby looking, and anyway, who's going to complain?

I decided I would make the doll a dress with a silk underlining and a chiffon-y outer layer. I have never made anything like that, but with strategic pinning, cutting out the fabrics together wasn't as hard as I expected. No doubt it's trickier with a human-scale garment.

 To make sewing it all together easier (I hoped), I used a method I read about on the Morgan Donner website, describing how to sew together a lined Elizabethan jacket. You whipstitch together the lining to the outer shell pieces, individually, then whipstitch all the pieces to each other to assemble. The resulting seams lie flatter and are very strong. Because of the doll's pose, I found it hard to make the stitches invisible, so I ended up overcasting the seams on the sleeves with silver thread to embellish them.

I wasn't happy with the neckline of the bodice, so I spent the better part of an afternoon creating and sewing on a ruffle to disguise it. 

The skirt is gathered with cartridge pleating. To keep the two layers of fabric from sliding around, I sewed them together before putting in the gathering stitches. Once the skirt was gathered, it seemed a good idea to secure it all with a waistband, since the fabric of the bodice is too thin for a strong joining of the skirt to the bodice. The skirt took a whole eight hour day. Whew!

Today I decided on her hair. I buy washed mohair from a goat farm in Elora, but it is not cleaned, so I think of the prep as a meditation. Her hair is on now, but it cries out for a hat. On to the internet for advice/tutorials/instructions/patterns!

I am working on an idea for what she will hold in her hands. Not sure if it will fly. Stay tuned.