Hannah's Handwork Green Dress for Elinor

Hello again! Wow, I wrote a lot of stuff for yesterday's post! So I will try and keep this one short...

Today I am showing you a green Regency dress for our Elinor Dashwood, handmade by Etsy seller Hannah's Handwork. That Elinor sure is getting spoiled this spring...heehee. Maybe it is time to get another Regency doll so that she can share Elinor's clothing???

We really liked the deep emerald green color of this dress and how it was contrasted with the white underskirt and trim. It is pretty easy to find Regency dresses in pastels and light colored floral fabrics. So this item really stands out of the crowd. Not many people do the pinner caps, so it was refreshing to get one with this dress. The wired white ribbon ties onto Elinor's head easily and holds really well. Wired ribbon was a good idea for that. The tiny white bows on the cap, sleeves, and waistline add a nice touch. It is all very well made, and we were impressed by the gathering on the bodice, the hand-stitched ribbon accent at the waistline, and the gracefully puffed short sleeves. We added some white tights, white gloves, pearls, and a puppy for a complete look. :)

Thanks for the great dress Hannah!
Enjoy our pics below!

Vintique Designs Custom Order Blue Regency Gown

Hello everyone! This post is particularly exciting because we get to share in-progress and finished pictures of a custom project with you. Woot!

Vintique Designs and Penny have been working on several custom Regency ideas and so far one has been 100% completed and received here in Badger's Wood. It is a stunning blue charmeuse gown with all sorts of beautiful eggshell white trim around the neckline, sleeves, bodice, hemline and running right down the center of the front of the gown.

This is the human-sized, Regency reproduction dress that the dolly version is based on:

Here are the in-progress photos, courtesy of Vintique Designs!

And here is our slideshow of the dress on our Elinor Dashwood. :)

Thank you for the gorgeous dress Vintique Designs!
It is just perfect. :)

Vintique Designs Regency Gown

What have we been up to since Saturday? Mostly spending too much time dressing and undressing ourselves in dolly clothes, but not actually taking enough pics for the blog. Blah. Once we get the outfit, hair, and accessories right we are sometimes too tired to then take the pictures! It takes a lot of effort to go through all of our stuff looking for the right shoes, etc. But we did manage to pull together this nice outfit today, mostly courtesy of Ebay seller Vintiquedesigns. :)

As you can see in the photos below, Elinor Dashwood is modeling a satiny Regency gown for y'all. It is a very nice peach and ivory dress that features a variety of inventive uses for lace: sleeves made of lace, lace over peach fabric at the hemline, lace accents on the waistline and center of the sleeves, and then a lace scarf to tuck underneath the neckline. I am certain there is a technical term for that neckline scarf thingy, but I can't seem to remember the word right now.... uhhhhhhhh..... fichu! Nope I didn't sneeze, that's what it is called- a fichu. ;)

When we saw this Ebay auction we knew right away it would look great on Elinor with her peachy lips and cheeks. To complete the satiny Regency look we added in a satchel purse from Etsy seller Terristouch. You can buy one of three different kinds (or all three)- by visiting this listing here. The choices are: peach and white, blue and white, and black with gold accents. They are pretty cool little drawstring bags and they work well for many different time periods.

Also, don't forget that Ebay seller Vintiquedesigns is also Etsy seller Vintiquedesigns56. Check out their Etsy shop by clicking here - where you can find some newly listed 1970s dresses, as well as other AG-sized doll clothing. :)

Enjoy our pics below!

Donna Cotterman Dress and Intro to Elinor Dashwood

Whoa...sorry for the delay everybody! I thought I'd have time to prepare this post in the morning before school....or maybe after school... but time has flown by and here it is nighttime already!

In this post we show you the Felicity that had an eye swap with our revised #16. So Connie Bonacorsi, our 1950s doll, got green decal eyes and Felicity received the dark brown eyes. She was named Elinor Dashwood after the character from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Hence she mostly wears Regency period clothing (roughly 1795 to 1837 in England). Although she has been asking to try on some modern clothing as well.... maybe she has a split personality or she is a time traveler?

So here is our first up-close photo of Elinor with her brown eyes, in a mystery dress which we will show you in a later post. (Some of you can probably identify the dress....heehee.) This eye swap service was completed by the TLC Doll Hospital in Colorado.


In the pictures below, our Elinor is modeling a dress, hat, and shawl from Etsy seller Donna Cotterman. The outfit also came with the little yellow roses that Elinor is holding. Thank you so much for the fantastic dress and accessories Donna!

Luckily for us, Donna recently started up an Etsy shop so we were able to purchase this lovely ensemble. We are quite happy with everything but Elinor says her favorite part of this outfit is the hat. Not many people create Regency period historical hats and bonnets for AG-sized dolls because, of course, there are not any true Regency AG historical characters. So it is nice to finally have this type of accessory. :)

Please enjoy our plentiful photos below of brown-eyed Elinor and her beautiful new dress.....and keep your eyes peeled for future posts on Elinor's wardrobe (we have many more Regency dresses to show you).

Coming up on this Wednesday we begin something new!

Caroline, over at American Girl Fans Message Board, gave us the idea to feature seamstresses who sew for themselves (or maybe sometimes on commission) and are AGFMB members. Of course these are very talented and creative people with fantastic outfits to share with us, so we thought it would be a great idea!

Every Wednesday we will do a post on some outfits created by one of these members. This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase new doll clothing (not owned by the two authors of this blog) and share with you some very beautiful photographs.

So come back to see what we are up to for yourself. And of course, I'll explain this new idea a little more clearly on Wednesday when we feature three dresses created by AGFMB member Heritage4.

See you soon everybody!

Guest Review: Donna Cotterman's Creations

Nikki is taking a stroll through the garden in this Regency gown from Etsy seller Donna Cotterman. The tiny purse and decorated hat complete this empire waist gown. Nikki was pretending she was Elizabeth Bennett all day. Now if we could just find her a ball to attend..

The Nimble Thimble Dark Satin Gown

At the beginning of Jane Austen's first published book- "Sense and Sensibility"- Mr. Dashwood has just died and left his estate to his son John, from his first marriage. Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret are his daughters from his second marriage. Their mother and the girls are left with a slim allowance in the will. Thus begins the tale.

Since Elinor is in mourning for her father, we decided that this dark satin gown would be a proper addition to her wardrobe. It is a well-constructed Regency gown with very lovely lace around the neckline and a bow around the waistline. The back is pleated to generate that Regency "poof" at the waistline. It was purchased from Etsy seller TheNimbleThimble, where a lot of the sewing is done by hand!

Our Felicity/Elinor was so eager to try on a piece of clothing from her Regency wardrobe that we didn't even have time to style her hair before taking the pictures! Of course, this situation was not helped by the fact that once we attempted to brush out her Felicity ponytail we discovered that there were bits of paint and glue on the ends of some of her hairs. What in the world? I honestly have never seen a doll come to our house before with paint and glue in her hair. It wasn't really noticeable until you tried to brush her hair. Penny was able to cut away all the bad parts without ruining her hair. I wonder what kind of trouble that Miss Felicity was getting into in order to get paint and glue in her hair?

By the time that whole "surgery" was complete, Felicity/Elinor was ready to just get her picture taken already. And then she wanted to put on the Fourth of July outfit that we showed you on July 3rd. Since then she has been digging through the closets trying to find the rest of her hidden wardrobe. ;)

The next post from Marvelous Me, Nora Demington, will feature ME! Yippee! And Woooot! Finally I get to have my own picture in my own blog again! What will I be wearing? A certain fantastic rabbit costume from Etsy seller gomunkcreations! Yes! Penny actually got me that costume! Thank goodness and praise Go Munk Creations for making a rabbit costume! Please: Go here to see their shop.

The Nimble Thimble White Day Dress

As you can see in the previous post, Penny is introducing us to a new Etsy shop for doll clothing. Well, new to us. Not new in general.

Welcome to the posting for the Etsy shop TheNimbleThimble's white Regency period day dress. Yes, it was purchased as an intended gift for our own Regency Elinor Dashwood custom doll that we have yet to create. However, Josefina saw the dress come out of the package and snapped it away from us. She likes how the stark white fabric looks with her skin tone and dark black hair. She is right- it does look stunning. The pictures don't do the dress justice. Simple, yet elegant, with a delicate striping effect. Also included was the white ribbon waist-sash.

Josefina has definitely bulked up her wardrobe in these past few months. I guess Penny will have to give someone else a chance at getting some new clothing, or some of the other girls might get jealous. Not me, of course- I never get jealous. All I'm saying is it would be nice to see some packages for me come into this house. Just a few. Maybe somewhere between 12-24 new outfits? Is that too much to ask for? Heehee.

p.s. We are holding off on publishing the black Regency gown until we actually get the Elinor Dashwood doll (an AG Felicity with brown eyes instead of green). That way you all have something to look forward to and she does get to model some of her own clothing!

The Nimble Thimble Dress and Capote

Last month Penny found the Etsy Shop TheNimbleThimble- isn't that the most clever name ever? I think so. The creative mind or minds behind The Nimble Thimble normally make human-size historical clothing that ranges from awesome to more awesome.

Luckily for us, The Nimble Thimble branched out to 18"-doll-size historical clothing. So around the same time that we were buying the Nsaffen Regency period sage dress we bought a whole bunch of Regency period clothing from The Nimble Thimble. Can you tell I like typing "The Nimble Thimble?"

All in all, we purchased a black gown, a white day dress (which Josefina has stolen for herself), and this patterned gold gown with gold capote (the bonnet-hat-thing on Kit's head). All very well-made, gorgeous items.

Kit is modeling for us below, despite the fact that she comes from the 1930s. So now we have 3 Regency period dresses for our Elinor Dashwood doll, which doesn't even exist yet. Do you think we are jumping the gun? Maybe so, but when a seamstress suddenly decides to make Regency period doll clothes and sell them on Etsy you don't wait until you get the appropriate doll. You buy them while you can and hope they make more soon!

So thank you The Nimble Thimble and we hope you make more Regency period doll clothing soon! Or in truth, any period doll clothing would be fantastic (hint*hint*wink*wink).

Nsaffen Sage Regency Dress

Another interesting Etsy find this month was Nsaffen's "All the Little Things" shop. Here we found a Regency/Empire period dress with a combination of two beautiful sage-colored fabrics. Sundari is modeling it for us below in two pictures.

This dress got Penny to thinking about making an Elinor Dashwood Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen character doll. Not like we need another doll on the Wish List- but it would be nice to have a Regency period character. She could be our first doll to come from England, in the storyline sense. In reality, we all come from China. Heehee.

Well one of the Wish List dolls is a Felicity that will get an eye-swap so she has brown eyes instead of green. (Yes, it is possible to switch AG doll eyes if you know what you are doing.) So maybe Felicity will become Elinor! Do you think it will be confusing to have both an Ellie and an Elinor in the same house?

Anyway, back to this nice dress. It is a really pretty design and I particularly like the lace accents around the neckline and the skirt. I look forward to snooping in Nsaffen's shop for new AG items!

Dollies' Dressmaker Josefina Dress

Ok, let's try to keep this steamroller rolling along and push forward with another Josefina outfit!

This one comes from The Dollies' Dressmaker website and may be one of a kind. I don't think they had a lot of this fabric available for dresses and had made some dresses for Felicity out of it as well. The fringed shawl also came with the dress. It is a simple regency period fashion design with a New Mexican twist and is quite flattering.

Stella is modeling the dress for us in another Photobucket slideshow and she looks ready to go to a fiesta in the village. Maybe she could stand in for one of Josefina's sisters? Let's grab that basket of tamales and head off to the Aragon house!