Victorian Barbie - part 1

Charlotte's birthday was coming up.  Rapidly.  And I eventually got around to asking her what she wanted.
"A pair of high heeled boots", came the reply.
"Excellent", I thought. "No sewing involved there."
There was a slight pause, and then, "And a Victorian dress."  Oh.
"Well you can have one or the other."  Internally I was begging her to pick the boots.
"I'll have a Victorian dress then please."  D'oh.
A search on the internet later and she found this dress...

Check out those sleeves!  The same company also make something similar in pink...

that we decided would be better to base Charlotte's dress on.  No sleeves for one thing!

I called the post 'Victorian Barbie' because when I ordered fabric I ordered it in cerise rather than baby pink.  And boy, is it pink!  I decided to do the dress in three parts: the pink overdress, the white ruffled skirt, and the hoop skirt underneath it all.  I also decided that as it's probably Charlotte's last princess dress (mind you, I've been saying that for about four years!) that we would go as big and over the top as possible.  If a thing's worth doing...

I traced a basic bodice pattern and then altered it to suit the style of dress.

I thought the best (read easiest!) way to do stripes on the bodice was to lay white ribbon on the pink fabric.  Check out the pattern matching!  You can also see the Barbie-ness of the colour.

I wanted rouleau loops down the front of the dress.  I've never made them before, so bought myself one of the gadgets.  I love it!  First I made the tube.

Then cut it to size and pinned it to the dress.  I tried to line up the loops with the ribbon stripes so they'd be evenly spaced.

Pinned.

And sewn.  Yes the top ones stick out at funny angles, but I'm still super proud.

And here's the bodice just about finished.

The satin frayed a lot.  I have pink fluff all over the house because of it.

I then cut out a skirt.  I just cut a big rectangle.  The length is the length I wanted the skirt to be.  The width is three times the width I wanted so I could gather it up.  I rounded the bottom corners as I thought it would look better, and more importantly, I thought it would be easier to sew on the bottom ruffle.

Bottom ruffle pinned ready for sewing.

After the ruffle was sewn on I had a bit of a break.  I went to the local shop, quietly chuffed with myself.  Chocolate may have made it into my basket as a reward.  It was all going so well.  On my way back home I was thinking that I only had to attach the skirt, leaving the gap in the side for the white ruffled skirt to show through, and put the zip in the back and then the over dress was done!  Put the zip in the back.  Put the zip in the back...  Then it hit me.  I'd made the skirt in one piece.  There wasn't a place for the zip to go down the back of the skirt!  I didn't panic (well not much anyway).  I thought the easiest thing to do would be cut the skirt into to bits, attach them to the bodice separately, then there'd be a space for the zip.  Which is what I did.

Overdress complete.  Coming up in part 2 we have the exciting (ok, not so much) tales of making the ruffle skirt and the hoop skirt.  And we have the part that you all want to see, pictures of a child in the dress.