Hollywood Dolls

WARNING! I didn't clean up my new sewing room before I took these pictures. What you see is what you get.

A month or so ago I talked my wonderful husband out of his "Man Cave". I was surprised how easy it was. I had been sewing in the corner of our family room for over 6 years. I didn't mind it for the most part, there were a couple of advantages: No one could see my space unless I invited them downstairs (I don't always feel like explaining my hobby to people) and I was still with my family. The disadvantages outnumbered the advantages though: My sewing area was always messy, I worried about other people's kids getting into my stuff, I couldn't sew and scrapbook at the same time, my fabric stash was stored in the garage, and my older boys were embarrassed about all the doll nudity when their friends came over.







My oldest son, Nathan, is 15 now. He likes having his friends over a lot and I like knowing where he is. I decided it was time to make the family room more "man cavey" and contain all my stuff in one area.

It took me a few weeks to get the old stuff out, and the new stuff in. I still have some things to organize, I can't believe how much stuff I have! The only challenge now is remembering not to isolate myself in my sewing room too much while my family is home.























My fabric whoared, now I can sit at my sewing table and look at all my fabric and tell myself I don't need more fabric, even though I could still fit one more plastic bin in there and the bin with the red fabric isn't very full.

It always seems like I have to write about the fabric when I blog about my outfits. This time is no exception.

I have made a few of the outfits from Audrey Hepburn's move "Funny Face". I plan on making more in the future, like the wedding dress again, and the train station suit ( if I can figure out how to make a flower pot hat).

This dress was on the screen for just a moment, but I loved it. I looked for years for the right fabric. At first I wanted silk, yeah right, dream on. Then I decided to use a cotton print. I mean how hard would it be to find a yellow, orange and red small floral print? Well it was harder than I thought it would be. I'm sure it exists, but it wasn't to be found in Western Washington.

I like the yellow and orange print I found, it is fun and sunny. Sewing on cotton was a lot of fun too. It had been a while.

I found pictures online of the whole dress, and was surprised to see it had a peplum like over-skirt.







I didn't have a brunette Gene with her hair up that worked with the hat except for "Oh La La". She didn't look sweet enough to wear it so I used my "Candied Lavender" Gene. It was her first modeling gig and she did a great job.



The hat is made of cream cross stitch fabric and bias cut silk dupioni. It was a lot harder than the dress to make.

I've seen the name La Pierle many times connected with beautiful and trendy doll fashions. What I didn't know was that this same person is an accomplished photographer and Photoshop user. Her real name is Valerie Humbert-Deshayes and she is a free-lance textile designer. Her photography and fashion design demonstrate and echo her passion for textures and fabrics.


Valerie's native language is French but her English is excellent compared to my French. She described the image and fashion to me and gave me permission to reword her description. The part in quotes are her words.

Valerie obtained the embroidered tulle with irridescent beads and mother of pearl sequins from her Indian textile supplier. She wanted something transparent and light even though the fabric is quite heavy due to the beading. Once she had the fabric the style of the dress came easily.
The idea behind the image's mood is "inspired by the magic of Christmas. Salvation is the concept that other higher power, as part of Divine Providence, saves Humanity from spiritual death or eternal damnation by providing for them an eternal life."

Post processing was done in Photoshop through the use of multiple layers and lots of skill!

You can see more of La Pierle's work at Etsy and Flickr. 

One of my new goals is to use up as much of my fabric stash as possible, including my scraps. During my last few projects I made up some outfits out of scraps. It feels really good to use up the whole piece of fabric and be done with it. Now if I could only sew faster I could get through my huge stash!

















These sheaths were made from the same silk as this dress





I even had enough for another bodice. Twilight Girl looks very "Mad Men".









All four outfits will be on sale in my store.