Here, we're going to look at what I did for the dress, as well as for her hair.
To begin with, Duchess' dress needs two things: trim around the top, and a panel on the front. The former is very easily taken care of. This is where your thin piece of black ribbon comes into play. Stitch it along the very top of the bodice, using the black stitching on the bodice itself as a guide. The pictures below serve as a before-and-after.
Figuring out how to make the panel on the front of Duchess' dress took the longest. (And unfortunately, I forgot to take pics of the panel before I sewed it onto the dress. Whoops!) It took me a while to figure out the best way to go about this, actually. I had to think of a way to get the panel onto the front of the dress. I ended up taking a piece of wide white ribbon and attached it to some fusible interfacing; and this is super easy to do, don't be intimidated!
Using the front of the bodice as a guide, I sketched out the shape of the panel, then cut the same shape out of the ribbon. Using the interfacing is easy. Take a piece of interfacing, and put the "wrong" side of your fabric (in this case, the back of the ribbon) next to the shiny side of the interfacing. Place your pieces on an ironing board. Then put a damp tea towel or pillowcase over it. Turn an iron to the "wool" setting and turn off the steam option, if you have one. Then press the iron down hard on your towel-covered panel piece for about 30 to 45 seconds. Lift the towel to see if it's fused together; if it hasn't, press again.
Once it cooled, I sewed the panel to the front of the dress, then sewed some of the thin black ribbon on in a zig-zag pattern. Make no mistake, it's a lot of work, but it comes out looking good.
I actually had the hardest part with her hair, believe it or not. I am pants at styling hair, I can't even do it on myself. I just stared and stared at her hair, mind running in circles, trying to figure out how this was going to work. Then I gave up and went to Youtube. There are a surprising amount of tutorials available, but this one sort of clicked with me and seemed the easiest for me to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hb3E2xmGxM. So I...uh...can't be of much help, guys. Sorry.
I am still not entirely happy with how it turned out; I think that my Duchess has a lot less white and mauve in her hair than the doll that AprilLily used in the video above. I also think the white hair is rooted in a different spot, because I could simply not get it to look right. And no matter how I try, I can't get the strand of hair on the side to curl nicely!
This was how Duchess turned out after her hairstyling session. Better than before, but still not as good as she could be.
But overall...I'm very satisfied with how this turned out. Giving Duchess a makeover was a ton of work, but it was surprisingly fun! There's something very satisfying about seeing your vision of something slowly come together. Maybe I'll end up getting a different EAH doll and just do embellishments on her for fun.
