Sewing a BJD Sundress (mostly) by Hand

This one is a project that had been sitting at the back of my mind for a while before I got around to actually doing any real work on it, and by "a while" I mean "several months." Which is pretty much par for the course for me. Actually, I finished making this dress back in July, and then entirely neglected to write a post about it through all of August. It was a busy summer, sue me.

I get a lot of my fabric at secondhand stores, because I'm... cheap, and that's where I found a yard or so of blue and white striped seersucker, which I thought would make a really cute doll-sized sundress. I had a pretty good idea of the style of dress I wanted to make right away, though I did do a couple of basic sketches to see how I liked certain design elements. 

I settled on a sleeveless dress that would have a close-fitted bodice at the midriff with gathering at the bust, a slightly dropped waist, and a long, gathered skirt with a wide ruffle. I've seen dresses in a similar style referred to as "milkmaid dresses," but that's a new term for me. They don't seem like they'd be very practical for milking cows, either.

By the time I was ready to actually start, I'd been doing some cleaning around the house and the sewing table was covered with stuff yet to find a permanent home. I didn't really feel like clearing it off, so as the title would suggest, I ended up sewing this thing together almost entirely by hand.

I started by drawing up and testing out a pattern for the bodice. I knew the skirt was pretty much just going to be a couple of rectangles, so I didn't really worry about that part. After some trial and error, this is what I had:

I was happy with that, so I went ahead and cut the pieces out of my good fabric. 

The bodice lining was designed to have a more structured, closer-fitting bust than the outer layer, which would be gathered at the top and bottom to create the ruffles I wanted. Here's how the lining looked when it was done:

Because I was hand sewing, most of this ended up being done at my computer desk, as evidenced by the fact that you can see my mouse and/or my laptop in most of the progress photos.

Then I got to work on the outside of the bodice.

I did treat all of the raw edges of the fabric with Fray Check before I started working, but I noticed that the seersucker liked to fray a lot regardless, so for added security I also finished my seam allowances with a blanket stitch.

You can see it a little more clearly here.

The one thing I knew I didn't want to do by hand was the actual gathering. I find my gathers just end up a lot more neat and even when I use a machine basting stitch as opposed to a hand-sewn running stitch, so I cleared enough space around the sewing machine to actually use it.

While I was at it, I also used the machine to do the topstitching on the straps, as well as gather the top of the ruffle and sew it to the skirt.

It really is just mostly rectangles, albeit with a dip cut out of the front to accommodate the shape of the bodice. I will point out, however, that I did actually hem the entire bottom ruffle by hand, which took... longer than it really needed to.

That's the wrong side of a back stitch, right there.

Okay, griping aside, with the top of the bodice gathered up I could sandwich the straps inside and pin it to the lining to sew around. I was careful to make sure all of the seams matched up as well as I could manage.

I went through some more trial and error here, trying the bodice on the doll and testing out the strap placement until I was happy with it.

These were way too close together.

That's much better.

Then, all that was left to do was to sew the bodice to the skirt and add closures. I sewed the outer layer of the bodice to the skirt, then folded up the raw edge of the lining and whip stitched it to the seam allowance, like so.

As for the closures, those actually gave me a little bit of trouble. I knew I had some miniature eyelets in my stash of supplies, so I'd originally planned to have the dress lace up at the back. Of course I didn't actually pull them out and look at them until the dress was almost done, which is when I realized that they were way too small for this scale. I toyed with the idea of ordering new eyelets in a larger size for a couple of days, but I ultimately decided it really wasn't necessary and opted to sew hook and eye closures along the back opening instead.

As you can see there is a little bit of gaping in the middle of the back as a result, but it really doesn't bother me enough to redo that set of closures.

Once the dress was finished, I had a lot of fun posing Astrid in it and taking pictures. I did make sure I got at least one that did a good job of showing off the finished dress itself:

 The rest were just for fun. 

Honestly, I'd kinda forgotten how much fun just actually playing with dolls can be. As much as I've enjoyed making all of these things for her, getting to just sit down and play around with poses and staging and taking pictures is just really entertaining in its own way. It's gotten me even more excited for when I finally have her face and wig finished.

I'm really happy with how the dress turned out, too. Actually, Astrid's still sitting on my desk wearing it as I'm writing this. It's nice to have something done that feels like a "full outfit" for her, even if it's only one garment. There's not much else I can dress her in and maintain her decency, since I haven't finished any pants or skirts for her yet. I still have a ton of this fabric left over, too. If I get three more dolls they can start a barbershop quartet and I can make them a bunch of little jackets.

As always, thanks for reading! At this point, when and what I'll post next is almost as much of a mystery to me as it is to you. I have a few projects on the docket, but only time will tell which ones I'll actually work on in the near future.