Above are three views of the doll I made to replicate an Elizabethan Fashion
doll from a period portrait of Queen Elizabeth's niece Arabella Stewart. In
the portrait she is about 2 years old. I decided that the doll should stand
not on legs but on a buckram cone (there is a picture of a similar surviving
fashion doll in Queen Elizabeth wardrobe unlocked) the edge of the cone is
wired with millinary wire. I used porcelain doll hands and arms but used flesh
colored femo clay to make the head myself. The upper body and upper arms are
fabric . The original doll seems to have pearls sewn on each of the diamond
shapes in the skirt but I miscalculated just how many diamonds there where
and the diamonds were too small for even the smallest pearls I had. I drafted
the pattern on my computer and added a hatch fill to get the diamonds. The
gold threads on both the foreskirt, overskirt, bodice and false sleeves was
done on the machine with coats and clark gold metallic spool thread. What you
see, except for the bodice and the edge work, is the bobbin thread because
it was easier to transfer the design to iron on interfacing in pencil and then
sew over the pencil lines. The puffs on the gold silk sleeves was done with
1/4 silk ribbon that was sewn through the sleeve fabric. The gold buttons on
the foreskirt are small brass beads. Because it was impossible to make fabric
tubes small enough to make the small segments of the cap sleeve, I used iron
on Wonderunder® to stabilize the backside of the velvet and then cut the
strips and sew then into the shoulder strap and sleeve band. The bodice is
sewn on the dolls body with 4 thicknesses of the metallic thread and is not
meant to be removed from the doll. The dolls hair is glued to the head as well
as the breaded bun. The neck ruff is made with a one inch bobbin lace and the
wrist ruffs are make with a 1/2” bobbin lace, they are both tide on with
twisted cotton cord and are removeable. The foreskirt is glued to the wired
buckram cone with Wonderunder® but
the over skirt is lined with red silk and is only attached at the waist below
the
bodice.
The
underside
of the cone is filled with gathered lace to simulate numerous petticoats.
