This Christmas, American Girl seems to be at the top of the list for
many girls. Bitty Bee has two AG dolls, Molly and Holly. Molly was
last year's Christmas gift from Nana and Grandpa and Holly is a "My
American Girl" doll that we found at a local resell shop for a good
price. Holly was supposed to be my doll for sewing, but she ended up in
Bitty Bee's bedroom rather quickly. This year, Bitty Bee has asked
Santa for a Samantha doll and I had to get a little creative.
Have
you seen the new Samantha? Her dress has been re-designed and is so
cute!!! It's a pretty pale pink with white lace trim and a burgundy
sash. The dress is solid pink fabric and has a dotted lace overlay.
She's wearing white tights, white bloomers and black Mary Jane style
shoes.
I
can certainly understand why lots of little girls, my own included, are
hoping to find her under the Christmas tree on Thursday morning!
A
few months ago, I got lucky. I'm in a few "buy/sell/trade" groups on
Facebook and in one of them, someone posted a retired Samantha doll for
sale, just the doll, no clothing. I made an offer on her and she became
mine. But there was the issue of her needing an outfit and I knew BB
would want the new pink outfit. So I did some brainstorming and
searched through the patterns in my digital stash until I found one that
I could alter a teeny bit to bring this pretty pink dress to life!
I chose the Mini Prairie Girl
from Ellie Inspired for this dress. Samantha's dress has the short
puffy sleeves that can be replicated with a simple peasant dress. The
Prairie Girl dress was easy to use for this one, I just had to turn the
front to the back so that I could put Velcro down it for the opening.
I used Clip Dots in Petal for
my main fabric and lined the dress in a lightweight white fabric, since
the Clip Dots is rather sheer. I raided my lace stash to find
something similar to what is used in the original dress. Luckily, I had
something that came very close!
One
of the bigger challenges was the sash. I tried a sash that could be
tied on and that kept moving around and just didn't look right. So I
picked up some single fold bias tape and busted out the needle and
thread to hand sew it on the waist of the dress. I'm not a fan of hand
sewing. At all. My fingers now hurt.
But I have to say, the end result was well worth it!!! Here they are, side by side.
The
lighting in my picture is pretty bad, I was hiding out in my closet,
where Samantha has been hiding out. I'm happy with the result and I
hope Bitty Bee loves her as much as I loved my Samantha when I was about
her age.
Oh,
and of course, Samantha will be getting a gift on Christmas, as well as
the other AG dolls in our house. I found the perfect sized dolls for
them while at Target today. They are ornaments but I just cut the
little hanging loop off from their hats and they are just the right
size!
Merry Christmas from our family to yours!
~*~Princess Bee~*~
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