Charlotte's Dress and shoes

I recently found and restored my Patsy Joan, Charlotte.

She came wearing this sweet dress, but

sadly, it was not in great shape.

Charlotte's dress is very fragile.

As you can imagine.

This dress has these embroidered touches that I love!

But there is also a lot of damage from age.

I think the best I can hope for

is stabilize and hide the most obvious holes.

There are a lot of tiny holes and torn lace.

Not surprising since this dress is around 80+

years old!

I did a gentle wash in cold water and 

started repairs after the dress was dry.

The chemise is actually in pretty good shape.

This is the only tear in this garment.

It has had a hook and eye that will

need to be resewn or replaced.

Her shoes are in bad shape.

and her socks are not much better.

I'm not sure how much I can do here.

I think the socks and shoes are a loss.

BUT NOT HER DRESS! 

I am determined to save it!

I have repaired the tear in the collar. I 

plan on adding some embroidered flowers

to hide all the little holes.

All the holes in both garments are 'Fray Checked'.

This is my go to when I need to stabilize old 

and fraying fabric.

This is the underarm section of the dress.

It was gathered and finished with lace.

The lace is deteriorated, so I need a solution.

I 'Fray Checked' and re-gathered the fabric by

hand. 

I tried on the dress to gauge the spacing of my gathers.

Looks good!

Here is the finished underarm area.  I took some 

advice from my friend Janet and used 

vintage lace to repair this area.

I folded the lace over the gathers

and stitched it down securely.

I'll repeat this with the opposite arm.

So, I embroidered some flowers to cover

the holes.  I tried to make the flowers

look as if they are falling from above.

I am deciding about using 

buttons on the shoulders or staying with 

the hook and eye closures.

This dress has what I call butterfly sleeves.

This is the repaired shoulder area.

The lace needed to be reattached.

This is the torn shoulder on the chemise.

I Fray Checked all my repair work.

I very carefully removed the hook and eye 

closures so they could be re-positioned 

for a better fit. I Fray Checked all the 

old stitch holes.

SO, Want to see the chemise and dress now??

OK

Here they are!

Here is the cleaned and repaired chemise.

I love the lacy legs!

And here is the dress!

 I tried to make the new flowers look

like they had always been there.

I used the same daisy pattern stitch that

you see on the pockets

I decided that using the hook and eye closures would

be best to preserve as much of the original

look of the dress as possible.

Well, Charlotte told me she was very happy 

to have her dress back and all repaired. 

Almost forgot the Before and After!

Thank you for stopping by!

One more thing!

My friend Karen Keen from the 

Composition Doll Collectors IO

suggested I make a pattern from this little dress!

So here it is.

I put a 1 inch mark on the pattern so you

 can tell if it is printing out at the right size.

ENJOY!