AGFMB Member Special Feature: Mrs. C

For today's AG Fans Message Board Member Special Feature, we wanted to showcase something Mrs. C. (Donna Cotterman) has made but has never sold. This post is a little late, we know (sorry everyone!)....but we eventually got around to creating it. Too much work to do and not enough time for fun blogging. :( I can't say this school year has been the easiest one so far. Anyone else want to do my homework for me? :P

So if you don't know, Mrs. C. is a member at AGFMB and also sells her wares at an Etsy shop she just opened this summer. Check out her Etsy store here.

Like all fine artists, even seamstresses sometimes make something they just don't have the heart to sell. She explained to us, "Here is the one outfit that I haven't been able to part with. No, we haven't played with it ....just modeled and then tucked in tissue paper. I know that someday someone will enjoy this gown....but for now.... it's at the doll house."

The photos you see below are the property of
Donna Cotterman. She has shown us this pink
colonial gown in a variety of ways,
modeled by her Elizabeth doll.
Enjoy!

Doesn't Elizabeth look beautiful?

Please join us again on this Friday when we give you the second installment of our Oktoberfest Costume Extravaganza! We haven't yet decided which costume to showcase this week, so it will be a surprise!

And next Wednesday we will return to the wonderful creations of AGFMB member Heritage4 with some more of her awesome dolly duds. How exciting!

See you soon everybody!

sdls275 Colonial Era Yellow Gown and Hat

Tada! Here is the promised post on Ebay seller sdls275's Colonial Era Yellow Gown and Hat!

Penny won this lovely gown and straw hat from an Ebay auction and we couldn't be more pleased with it. This is our first colonial gown from this seamstress's studio- Heirloom Doll Designs. Six pieces in total arrived, nicely packaged in a special box and wrapped in tissue paper: straw hat decorated with flowers, yellow light-weight skirt that ties to the waist and even has pocket slits, patterned jacket with very fancy trim, two stomachers- one with lacing and one without, and a thin scarf that tucks into the jacket and stomacher.

We tried to put panniers underneath this skirt- but it wasn't going to happen with the tight-fitting jacket that scoops down over the waist and buttocks of the doll. The ensemble looks gorgeous without them- but just in case you were wondering where the panniers went- that is the story!

Mary is very very happy with her new outfit and is pleased as punch Penny won the auction. This outfit is certainly a unique and high-quality item! My favorite part is the ruffles around the jacket- how do you even make those? I have seen them on gowns in colonial paintings- but never understood the construction. Looking at them up-close and in person, all I can say is it is time-intensive work!

Please enjoy the slideshow below! Next time (hopefully later today)- a list of Etsy stores you may be interested in exploring.

Mattimillinery Gypsy Costume

Hmmm. So next we have this Gypsy costume from Ebay seller mattimillinery, as you can see in the pictures below. The outfit came in 3 parts- the dark green vest, the cream under-dress and the red over-skirt. It looks pretty fantastic on Mary with her dark reddish-brown locks.

When looking at it, I do see a gypsy. But I also see a work outfit from the early American period. Actually, I specifically associate it with outfits worn at Plimouth Plantation or Old Sturbridge Village. I have been to both places for school field trips.

Hence, we have given this old-fashioned outfit to Mary Royall so she can go play with the horses in the Royall family stables without getting her nicer frocks dirty. I sort of imagine it as a dress her mother used to play in as a girl and it was handed down to Mary.

I'm sure all those historians out there would argue with my loose interpretation of fashion- but let's just use our imagination...

Mattimillinery Colonial Gown

Mary Royall appears again in a brand-new Ebay purchase from the seller mattimillinery. If you haven't caught on by now, we got a lot of stuff from Ebay this month... (cough cough).

In the photos you see the dress paired with the Keepers lace cap. The dress did come with a cap and shawl but I thought it would look cool with the lace cap instead. This is what happens when you put an eleven-year-old in charge of costume arrangements for the photo shoots...

I have to say we were really impressed with this gown and it is one of the fanciest dresses Mary owns. You don't often see doll clothes seamstresses using such thick brocade and woven fabrics, even though they are somewhat more "historically accurate." They are gorgeous fabrics and in such a beautiful combination here. But I bet they are difficult to work with.

Meet Mary Royall!

Ok, so in the last post she was Ruthie Smithens but now she is Mary Royall!

In previous posts you may have realized that Penny
1) has a definite tendency to buy colonial dresses
but
2) does not have a colonial period doll!

Mary Royall is now going to fill that void. Her character comes from a John Singleton Copley painting of the Royall sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, created around 1758. The exquisite oil painting now lives in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

From the MFA website "[Copley's] portrait of Mary and Elizabeth Royall is even rarer for showing two children, the teenaged daughters of Isaac Royall, of Medford (near Boston), Massachusetts, one of the wealthiest merchants in New England..."

(There is more on the website, but I didn't want to infringe on any copyrights....Feel free to visit www.mfa.org and search for "Royall"!)

So instead of Mary Royall being forever trapped in an oil painting, she has come out in doll format to have fun in the "real" world.

Here we see her in a Dollies' Dressmaker blue striped work gown. Penny has wanted this gown for awhile but had a difficult time justifying it's purchase since we already have 300000 colonial gowns but no doll. But now we do have a doll! Maybe someday we should get a doll to be her sister Elizabeth? Hmmmm...more dolls....How crazy are we?

Keepers Cream Tea Gown

While browsing an AG-related forum for more information on the new Rebecca Rubin character, Penny discovered someone selling a Keepers Colonial Tea Gown! What a fantastic find!

We are so excited to have something created by Ebay seller keepersdollyduds from before we started collecting Keepers clothing. It's like traveling back in time!

Sundari asked to be the model for this dress. Since she got to try on Josefina's outfit she has been interested to try on clothing from different historical time periods. We are using another Photobucket slideshow because we have a lot of photos. This Keepers outfit includes a skirt, bodice-shirt, lace cap, shawl and shawl clasp. The lace apron is "built" into the skirt. The forum seller also included a matching hair ribbon for us!

As a side-note, some of book illustrations for Rebecca Rubin have been released on the web. So if you haven't seen them already- start searching!

Terristouch Purple Colonial Dress

Though perhaps not historically accurate (particularly with her bangs), we wanted to show you what Samantha looks like in a colonial era gown.

We still have to get a doll that is specific to that historic time period! Samantha looks so good in this dress maybe we should get a dark-haired doll for the role. Which doll from our huge wish list should get that assignment?! Haha.

This purple gown comes from Etsy seller Terristouch. It looks similar to other dresses we have already bought, but the fabric of this dress has been calling to Penny for awhile. Purple is her favorite color, with blue running in a close second place. And two-toned purple? Well, that's just too good to be true!

Dollies' Dressmaker Undergarments

Once upon a time in a faraway catalog called American Girl, there were undergarments. Unfortunately, someone in the kingdom of American Girl decided that dolls don't need to have undergarments anymore. That person or persons would be wrong.

I myself love to wear undies, and many of the outfits we buy require a certain type of undergarment for the proper shape and fit. However, AG undies are going the way of the dodo. The items needed to keep Felicity's dresses in the right 1700s shape are now retired.

This was disappointing to learn and we here in Badger's Wood totally missed the boat on that one (as well as the boats for many other sets of under-thingys).

Fortunately for us, The Dollies' Dressmaker still creates these fantastic items (sans under-bodice). We were able to get a set of panniers and a tie-on pocket to go under the colonial era dresses we own. To be smart, we should probably get another set soon.

In the photos my sister Ellie is showing off her legs in order to reveal the undergarments (the two blue and white bulges next to her legs are the panniers). The last photo shows you how they give the dress the proper shape.

Shape may seem like an unimportant detail in the grand scheme of the entire outfit, but in the end we are trying to learn about history and get the whole picture.

What did colonial girls have to wear, either seen or unseen? They certainly would not have been walking around without any undergarments on!

Suzzy0accessories Colonial Gown

As the final post of 2008, I wanted to show you more of....ME! Shameless, I know.

Last but not least for today, we have another colonial dress, purchased from the Etsy store of Suzzy0accessories. It is actually a sleeveless dress with the bodice-jacket over it. So you have two outfits in one! On hot days we can just wear the sleeveless dress. It is quite an elegant and creative dress design.

I think we really need to get a colonial era character in this house to wear all these dresses! Maybe Felicity??? But we already have a red-haired green-eyed girl- my little sister Maggie. Do you think she'll mind if we trade her in? Haha, just kidding.

Dollies Dressmaker Felicity Dress

It's me! It's me! Finally, I get my own picture back up on my own blog. Haha.

I am modeling The Dollies' Dressmaker Felicity Work Dress. I think AG used to offer this dress, but it is now retired. So instead of searching on ebay for a $100 dress, we found it at The Dollies' Dressmaker. The quality is fantastic!

The Dollies' Dressmaker is not on Etsy, but instead has its own posh website and blog- so be sure to Google both of these things. There is a "What's New" section of the blog where you can see the newest designs!

You may be wondering why we need more colonial dresses, since we have nearly 1000 already. You can never have too many doll clothes. That's my motto.

The pictures below show the dress with and without the accompanying apron. The hair kerchief also comes with the dress. Gosh, I look gorgeous...I mean *cough cough*...the dress looks gorgeous!

Terristouch Blue Colonial Dress

Stella is modeling a dress from Etsy seller Terristouch. I bought several items from her, but we'll start with this one because it goes with the colonial theme. The other items include a gray Victorian dress, for a doll like Samantha Parkington, and a yellow dress dated circa the 1930s for Kit or Ruthie. I am currently commissioning a pioneer dress from her. I will definitely post images of that when I get it.

Dollies' Dressmaker Colonial-Era Items

Josefina Montoya is modeling this dress purchased from Dollies' Dressmaker. I went on a buying spree of colonial gowns...I probably have nearly ten or so now. So below is me, Nora, in another example and then Ellie in a blue dress that originally came with an apron. She didn't want to wear the apron and prefers how the dress looks without it.