This blue baroque dress for Felicity is one of the first American Girl doll dresses I ever made. It is still one of my favorites.
For the base pattern, I used Felicity’s Christmas Gown and Petticoat from the Pleasant Company Historical Patterns set. (You can download the patterns here for free!)
The fabrics come from a wonderful little fabric shop in Boston’s Chinatown. They sold remnants of designer fabrics – not much, just a meter or two of each, but every remnant was a) Spectacular, b) just enough to make one really fabulous doll dress and c) Priced at genuine remnant prices – $5 or so. One weekend I found this lovely crinkly polyester satin and a embroidered black net, and immediately dashed off to the trim section of the store to pick up silver laces and trims to match!
The over-skirt was originally intended to be a polonaise, which is why I made it so long. I basted the net to the satin and cartridge pleated 54 inches of fabric into the waist, and we loved the look of it so completely that we couldn’t bear to pull it up into loops. It had gravitas.
The Front:
The Back:
We made this dress the same summer The Patriot (Mel Gibson’s Revolutionary War movie) came out. I’d just made the dress so mum and I absolutely HAD to see the movie – I remember hugging her and both of us squee-ing with pleasure when we saw the ribbon necklaces that the ladies wore – they’d clearly based their costumes on MINE!
And I love the stomacher. I really really love the stomacher.
And the hairpiece – although I don’t have a proper photograph of it – it is an ostrich plume with a wired ribbon rosette and white feather tufts – and a vintage marcasite brooch pinned to the front.
The bodice front doesn’t quite match up with the stomacher – and I’m still not quite sure why.
This blue baroque dress has aged amazingly well – it’s still one of my favorites – if not THE favorite. It’s exuberant! All bright and colorful and joyful!
And once more, just for fun:
That is simply the MOST beautiful AG doll dress I have EVER seen. You have some amazing talent! Love, love, love, love it!!
Thank you very much. That's a lovely thing to say! I do love sewing for dolls – even more than for myself. (It feels far more indulgent.)
Clearly I need to drag the rest of the AG archives onto this blog as well!