Becoming a Queen -- Part I

Hello again. It's nice to see you back at court.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was not intended to be representative of any one queen in particular and certainly not any one nationality. However, through the iterative, artistic process, I became most notably a British queen...And here's why...

I most loved the stature and bearing of Queen Mary...She was quite buxom which gave her a large display "case" for her copious jewels...

Queen Mary was always festooned with jewels. And I liked that too.

In Allie's Dreaming Maiden pattern, the entire doll is built on top of the hair piece...and her Dreaming Maiden had nice long flowing blond hair. And , at the risk of the gentlemen whom I govern taking me less than seriously, I wanted to wear my hair up...

So I decided to adopt the veil of the Russian Queens (they were quite beautiful, by the way)...

With the addition of the veil, I wanted ensure that I would not be mistaken for a bride. And that led me to adopt the garland ruban or the ribbon garland that the British queens wear for State functions. Perfect.

And I loved the idea of creating in miniature, the Royal family orders which are worn on the sash...

Here's my favorite pic of the Queen Mum and you can see the orders pinned to her sash...

Now that there was a general plan, it was time to get busy.

Using Allie's freezer-paper curved piecing method which is detailed in her book, I was able to have a great degree of control over the piecing and placement of my fabrics. I LOVE Allie's curved piecing...it's much more genteel than the angular nature of flip and sew...So far, so good.

Next up was the part I dreaded most...the face. But here's where Allie's tips helped again.

I set out with the intention of making multiple faces so I cut out 5-6 pieces of flesh-colored fabric (I recommend a really tight weave like kona cotton) and I traced the face onto ALL of them.

Using a .005 micron pen, I used Allie's suggestion of tracing a picture (great idea)...

These were my three finalists. From my experience, pictures of faces with the biggest eyes worked best. Even with only one strand of sewing-weight thread, stitching takes up a lot of space and tends to "close" the eye so it's helpful to start with a bigger eye to begin with.

I chalked on all the versions and then let my committee of nieces choose the one they liked best...

I had noticed Allie's Maiden had a very nice shading to her lips, which I liked and tried to replicate. And that the almond shape to her eye was left open on one side which also gave more of a wide-eyed look....So I replicated that as well...

I can't tell you how relieved I was to finish the face.

Now onto the fun part, the hair and the tiara!!

I wanted the tiara to be nestled in amongst my curls and you can see from this first rendition,

that my hair is a bit flat and my tiara is a bit too coarse having been stitched onto ultrasuede...

I knew I needed to add curls and dimension to my hair and to figure out some way of making my tiara more realistic...

I posted about how I solved my tiara problem in my post, A Tale of Two Tiaras, back in Dec 2009 -- I just didn't say what I was using it for at the time *wink.

And here's where I ended up. With curls, jewelry and a better crown...

I stitched the bodice and the arms separately as Allie instructed, embellishing them with gold thread, rose montees and pearls.

Then came the fun of making the Orders. They're only about 3/8" tall...I just printed very tiny pics of George V and George VI on silk and sewed them inside the oval jewelry findings I had in my stash...A few tiny stitches with 2mm silk ribbon and Voila...

I gave myself a slight bosom...Truth be told, even though I admire Queen Mary's endowment, I didn't want the burden as I aged...

To be continued.