Green velvet dress

The next dress made with patterns from a book is a long dress made of green velvet. The book is Rosemarie Ionker's "Fashion Doll Clothing," and the pattern is on pages 97-98. The pattern is for Madame Alexander's Alex, but I was making the dress for the CED doll Colin. That meant more resizing.

I started by resizing the pattern to the best of my abilities. I took the necessary measurements and added length and width as required.

However, I didn't trust my patterns, so I made a prototype of the bodice. I suspected the front might be too wide, which turned out to be the case. As I hadn't sewn the front middle seam, it was easy to pin it to get the bodice to the right size. All I had to do then was to adjust the patterns accordingly.

The lower part of the pattern was easier to resize as it only required adding some length. Thinking of this afterwards, the fabric wasn't the best choice for this design due to the number of panels, but I didn't think of that when I started.

After sewing all the pieces together, the dress was fitting surprisingly well. The patterns I made weren't perfect, but good for a first attempt. Maybe I'll make another dress using more suitable material now that I know what still needs fixing.

I sewed a zipper on the back, because it's the easiest closing mechanism for a dress like this. Here you can see some of the problems I had with the fabric. Fortunately, it's all in the back and out of sight most of the time.

Here's the finished dress after making the sleeves and finishing all the edges. I think it's looks nice enough, and what it especially does is give Colin a more normal body shape. I'm not quite sure what's wrong with her measurements, but she doesn't look very good in narrow skirts.

Here's a closeup of the shoes. I made these over 10 years ago, I think. The color is maybe a bit too light to go with the dress, but at least they're green.