When I received the porcelain doll parts from a friend, who said, “Didn’t you mention that you could find someone who could use these?” (I did say that). I was going to give/sell them. But actually, shipping these so they get across the country in one piece is a little cost prohibitive, especially the whole lot at once.
So here I was, looking at this array of body parts, and my artistic self was drawn to the head that had the broken breast piece.

To me, she looked like Arwen, (played by Liv Tyler) from Lord of the Rings trilogy. So I said to self, ‘How about gluing that one back together and keeping her?’ There just happened to be in the bin of parts, some arms and legs that were of proper proportion for her. The arms are in the bin because one of the hands had some broken fingers as well, so I couldn’t possibly give or sell those to someone anyway. Could I?
I glued her back together and created a body armature in the same way I create armatures for the dolls that I sculpt myself.

The dress is a variation on patterns originally created by Denisa at molendrix. She has amazing patterns she created for 12 inch dolls, but my porcelain doll is nearly twice that size, so I had to do some work enlarging the pattern to fit. I used a combination of pattern pieces from the Farewell Dress and the Rose Dress patterns on her site. Testing the patterns with scrap fabric is a must before cutting into the actual fabric.

And I had the perfect fabric for her costume, a vintage apron that I couldn’t possibly part with.
It was a daphenous polyester voile in a periwinkle and aqua blue abstract floral on one side and a periwinkle crepe satin on the other which I used for the outer dress.

I also used a darker turquoise blue silky polyester lining on the floral dress.
I used this exercise to practice my hand sewing skills so all the costume is sewn by hand, no machine used.

These silky polyester fabrics are sooo hard to work with!
I vow to go back to working on lesser elves who wear common, natural fabrics of cotton and linen!
Each piece is custom tailored to every doll I make. (On the first picture, you can see where her collar was broken and repaired.)

Next step in the process is doing something with the bald head. I found a farm in New Hampshire that sells online, Nightingale Fibers. How could I resist a name like that! (I live on Nightingale Lane!) They had a beautiful dark brown dyed Corriedale wool, which probably is not the correct fiber to be using for doll hair, but I’m going to try to make it work. You will see in the final pics that the hair is not as long as I would have liked since a lot of it combed out in the final process, but it turned out ok.
For the wigging process, I used the tutorial by Adele Po.
Now, I have to work on accessories and shoes because someone asked about shoes. (Thank you, my dear sister, for that!)
I’m creating my own shoe pattern from her foot and using knowledge I’ve gathered from reading so many tutorials on line that I couldn’t possibly pinpoint any one for how I created these. I had this little piece of tapestry ribbon that I’ve saved for a quite a while, it was so pretty, I couldn’t throw it out! (can I say pack rat!) I was glad to finally find a use for it. I also used a piece of faux suede and the same lining from her dress.

The process was to create the shoe, the sole and a lining, and put them together.
Then there are the small details like hand embroidery, beading, and this closure made from a pair of silver earrings that I no longer wear.
I love reusing small items like this to repurpose for my doll’s costumes.

So, here is the final result of a couple of weeks work, working on it off and on.
This is an example of the work that goes into costuming an art doll.
I really can’t decide which photo I like best.
Arwen is wearing a morning dress as she sits in the courtyard waiting for Aragorn to return.







Thank you for reading the process for creating this costume! Please subscribe to my page to see all my future art work!
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