Fashion Doll Patterns: Jane, emerging........

The beginning of a Lord Perry Pattern design begins with a series of inspiration; no historical collection would be complete without the six wives of King Henry VIII, of England.  Because they are so popular, we know quite a bit about them from historical sources, movies, and television.

When I decided to create patterns for these ladies, I wanted to use quite a bit of accuracy yet incorporate those details with techniques that made construction a bit easier and provide an appearance more consistent with modern opinions of beauty and styling, etc. ( I'm sure most of you recognize the influence of "Anne of the Thousand Days" on the pattern "Anne, the Ambitious",)  You can view this tradition of styling on all costumes of re-makes of older period movies, etc; the original costumes are always used as models or inspiration for the updated versions of these costumes, yet look very different in each movie.

Several years ago in London, I collected several copies of costumes that were worn at one time or another of the wives of King Henry VIII of England.  One of my favorite costumes was this representation of Jane Seymour who gave King Henry his obsessively desired heir but died in the process (too bad so many of his targeted passions were unlucky enough to become his wives!) 

Lord Perry patterns fit Fashion Royalty dolls with only minor modifications; I have purchased eight different dolls to use as models, those with FR, FRA, body types little or no modification whatsoever (Vanessa or Veronique Perrin); the FR2 and FRT body types only need minor increases to length of lower leg and lower arm pattern pieces, so they should work beautifully with the existing Lord Perry patterns. (I took a dress off one of my Barbie dolls with the vintage body type and it fit perfectly ).  I will know more when I dress more of the dolls in my costumes.  

Moving forward, I will show these modifications on the new patterns Lord Perry will release.  I will also show a picture of both the Mattel Doll (Barbie) and Integrity doll (Fashion Royalty) in the garment I construct (usually, one will wear view A and the other will wear view B )-you already know Lord Perry patterns have at least two views of every costume.  

I have chosen the doll, chosen the costume I want to re-invent, and I will now begin the construction!  Hopefully, I will soon show you the result of the first effort.  Please remember you can see all of the Lord Perry Patterns @ LordPerryPatterns.com

Lord Perry tip for the week:

 When cutting out pattern pieces ( I have my pieces ready for the first proto-type),
I always use rotary cutters and a fabric glue such as Fray-Check to seal the raw edges of the pattern.  The pieces of fabric are simply too small to suffer seam damage, especially on the fabrics suitable for these costumes.