Challenge Two - The Ellowyne Challenge

Well, here’s a challenge all right!

One I am looking for ward to as well, I might add!

The Ellowyne doll is a lovely doll and well worth owning! If you don't have one already, you need to think about getting one!

So, the challenge, to create a five piece ensemble that transitions from day to night…
Not easy to get five garments all working together to create an ensemble especially for evening wear.

After many hours research looking through countless images, my inspiration came from a picture of an old 1900’s style coat…which looks right up Ellowyne’s street!

Then I thought well what happens if the coat actually becomes the outfit?

This is where all the layers began to evolve. The sleeves would become the dress, the foundation of the whole ensemble and also the underlying darkness.

The shorter sleeves and the collar became the blouse underneath and the coat became a sleeveless jacket to over the top!

The dress had to be kept to a minimum, it is the foundation of the ensemble and the only parts that really needed to be shown were the very bottom of the dress and the sleeves.

I also had to keep the bulkiness down or poor Ellowyne would have a very matronly figure by the time she had all her other garments on top.

I like the long lean and simple look on Ellowyne especially with the bright flash of Nevermore’s red hair falling down the back.

The waist was kept high, in line with the coat, nothing worse than several different waist heights!

The top part of the dress was made in the black and white checked fabric which matches, and later becomes part of the coat.

The sleeves are tricky on Ellowyne as she has her fingers quite wide apart and thus needs wider sleeves.

The sleeves on the dress have to fit quite tightly for this design so they had to have an opening at the cuff, this fastens with press studs and is trimmed with gun metal coloured glass beads. The wrists are trimmed with black lace.
Her waist is trimmed with black satin ribbon and the back of the dress fastens with press studs and is trimmed with tiny black buttons. The inside of the bodice is lined in grey fabric.

Next came the blouse, this was tricky, if I didn’t do it in a very sheer fabric, Ellowyne would look like she was wearing a maternity outfit, not something she would enjoy! So the fabric I chose, (which must have been the most difficult in the world to work with) was the "barely there" organza.

A fabulous colour which, if you look at it one way is red, or blue if you look at it another.

Very much like Ellowyne, you can look at her in many ways and no two people will see her the same.

(Actually, as I worked on this blouse late into the night, it also looks different under different lighting conditions!)



The difficulties with the fabric were many! You couldn’t always see it, it was so light and airy that you couldn’t always feel it!
My sewing machine took one look at it and ran for the hills, the fabric would slip around over
itself and the seams wouldn't hold due to the fabric fraying!

At this point, any sane person would have given up, but I wanted that look of the colour changing fabric and besides it went really well with the fabric that I had lined up to use for the skirt!!

So, I wasn’t giving up! I tried several ways of over-locking the seams to see if they would hold and eventually they did!

This meant all the seams had to be done on the over-locking machine. Not very easy on something so small.

Here you can see Ellowyne, "patiently" waiting while I make several different versions of the blouse!

The collar was a joy (!) to do keeping the fabrics together with the gathered lace in between, finding enough pins to hold it and then trying to feed it through the over-locker without hitting the pins - took time I can tell you!

Then it came to fastening the blouse, it had to fasten down the front as the dress had fastened down the back and I wanted to keep bulk to a minimum. I decided to fasten the blouse edge to edge with tiny buttons and loops, big mistake!

The edges of the blouse were over-locked and were holding nicely but they wouldn’t stand having loops worked down the edge. The over-locking stitches pulled away from the fabric and the whole of the front of the blouse came apart!!

So, start again, blouse two, this time I allowed for extra fabric down the front of the blouse to make a larger overlap! Then sewed press studs down the front and trimmed the front with tiny beads and sequins to give a little bit of glitz to Ellowyne’s ensemble and also to hide the press studs.

Well, on with the skirt. This had to be drop dead gorgeous and a really eye-catching addition to Ellowyne’s ensemble for her evening attire.

It was made in a soft silky fabric that matched the blue/red colouring of the blouse fabric but in a much more subtle way. The black lace was used to add a touch of drama.

Ellowyne likes a touch of drama now and then!

The seams were all top stitched in black and the back of the skirt laced right up the back with black satin ribbon.
The skirt is a salute to her grandmothers corsets only fashionably longer and a lot more practical (and comfortable).
It finished just under the bust so that the blouse became the top half.
Originally I was going to make this with a small side fastening but Ted said the outfit had to be worn on a Catwalk and I had visions of the poor model hobbling about trying to get it off!!
In that case, I decided to have the whole of the side as the opening, then the model could whip it of in a very dramatic fashion!!

Ok, in this picture Ellowyne is over dramatising slightly!! Her corset wasn’t as difficult to get on as her grandmothers would have been, she is just empathising!!

Next the jacket, fairly simple you may think!
Oh, no it wasn't! For some reason the fit just wasn’t quite right on the first version, it just looked too tight and uncomfortable, and there is nothing worse than an uncomfortable looking doll!

So the second jacket was made bigger, and as I wanted to keep the bulk to a minimum, I clipped and trimmed all the seams as I went along, another big mistake!!

The lining of the jacket with all it’s neatly trimmed seams couldn’t cope, the fabric frayed and the seams all opened up!

So on to jacket three, (by this time Ted had voiced understandable concerns about the ensemble being too period. Ellowyne likes period, in my opinion!) so I decided to update the jacket a little.

I tried buckling the front instead of spending hours with tiny buttons and beads. But somehow it just looked too bulky and slightly too gothic, I think it over modernised it, but I wish I had taken photo’s of it at that stage!


Anyway, I decided the buckles just didn’t work and went back to plan A.

Time by now was very tight!!

Otherwise I may have re-done the jacket again as I still wasn’t too happy with the fit across the chest but hey, deadlines, deadlines!

On to her hat, this was actually quite fun to do, my great grandmother was a milliner and boy, did I wish she was here!

The hat had to be Ellowyne’s “dark cloud” but I didn’t want something as miserable as a black hat!

I wanted the underlying darkness again.

So lined it with the black dress fabric, the actual hat fabric was the black and white check to match the coat, then it was trimmed with the floaty black feathers to pick up Ellowyne’s “cold wind” as it blows.

Then the fabrics from the skirt and the blouse were made into roses to finish off the hat.

Now the worry starts again! Did I get this one right ?