Doll School Uniform

The dolls are often press ganged into playing school with the girls, they also often go to real school. But like true American children, they wear civvies. The girls wear school uniforms, so naturally the dolls need uniforms. 


The fabric came from a school shirt, which is actually part of the girls' Winter uniform. The red and white stripe is the same fabric that their summer dresses are made from and I know the girls like wearing their Summer dresses more, so that is what I made. 

I used my Simplicity pattern, 1443, View A, with the sleeve from View C. The shirt hem is straight, so I was able to cut that off and use it as the skirt. No need for more seams, or new hems. The girls' dresses button through the front, but I didn't want to mess around with this type of fastening for the doll dresses. Instead, I added a front placket, but I didn't sew it down. It is the buttons that anchor it to the bodice. You can't see it in the photos, but in real life, it is quite realistic. The bodice is self lined but I wanted to save my scraps to try to get a Winter shirt out of them so I lined the bodice with some broderie voile. The collar is quilting cotton.

I used the puff sleeve pattern from View C, and folded out a lot of bulk through the centre. I needed a straight sleeve but it has come out puffy. Still, it is close enough to the real thing, and they need a bit of ease to get them on the doll.

The pockets are too large for the scale of the dress, but I did sew them on at the right height, the same height and in roughly the right place. A huge improvement over my usual patch pocket attempts!

The girls uniforms have two small ties at the back, which meet in a buttonhole. I could have made them, but it would have used a lot of fabric, and would have only been for the satisfaction of making a better copy of the dress. As it is a representation, rather than an exact copy, and would get in the way of dressing the doll, I left them off.

I would love to say that I'll be making loads of these dresses, out of all the discarded uniforms, for all their friends, and the Summer Fete, but it was kind of a joyless sew. I'm not sure why. Did the fabric seem too worn? Was the pattern too much of a fiddle? I'm not sure, but there were a lot of elements that were just a bit of a pain and I don't think another one is on the cards.

But when I look at Emily Bennet, standing there in her pigtails, it is all worth it!

Another Jungle Cake

Eldest does not remember her 4th birthday party where she had the first Jungle Cake, so she asked for one for her 9th birthday. I looked out the pictures of the other one and she was very impressed, so we made something very similar.

I was able to make it much smaller - her 4th had 20 children, plus parents - so I just made two layers of chocolate cake in a square tin. I made the cakes and the fondant leaves the weekend before and froze them. The leaves were much quicker too, I started cutting out before all the colouring was mixed into the icing and I really like the variegated effect. The colour mixes in more evenly as you re-roll the icing for more leaves, so I was able to get different leaf colours without actually adding any more colouring. I cut all the leaves freehand, so it went a lot quicker too. I was disappointed that they flopped in the humidity and lost most of their lovely curliness.

The pond is a bit too uniform to be a proper jungle pond, I should have made it meander more, but the honeycomb rocks are just too delicious to skimp on. The pond glitter was left over from the Frozen Cake, but it is just perfect for water instead of ice. The snake sweets are always hugely popular with children and we had a lot of fun positioning them slithering up the sides of the cake. They were also extremely handy for filling in the gap at the bottom of the cake. Can you see one under the trees?