French Beauty

My French beauty is now completed, except for her necklace of English cut antique cobalt blue glass beads, which I found out will take into November to get here, so I decided she shouldn't have to wait that long to show off her pretty dress, hat, shoes, and corsage. When it was first brought up to make a doll like this, I didn't realize all the differences it would be than the normal Izannah's that I make, but I found out, there is a huge difference, both in head shape, body shape, hair, and probably most of all,  the clothes she needed. Thinking about the French fashion we see all the time in the doll world, there are many roads I could have gone down in terms of style of dress, but I saw a teen fashion outfit, yes, like many others, I didn't know there were antique french teen fashion dolls, but there are. I chose to make an outfit like one of these. the dress is evening wear, or party clothes. Everyday dresses, and walking suits can be made for her as well. You ask me,  Have you ever made shoes and hats and corsages before now, I answer you,  with a big NO. HaHa  It's a wonder my poor little brain didn't explode, or implode thinking about how to make all this. I tell you all, I have a new respect for the dress makers in the antique doll world. So many things you can do, so many twist and turns of fabric and ribbons, and they put so much style and beauty into their designs. Ask me about her bustle. That bustle is for me , my first piece of clothes that took real designing to make it work. the problem isn't the bustle, but putting on the bustle, where it and the stand don't fight one another. I am super glad I have finished her. I did consider rolling and restyling her hair, but I thought I would leave that fun to someone else. As usual when we finish a doll,  I feel I have done all I can for her, given her my utmost in time and limited ability to make her beautiful, and lovely clothes to go out into the world.

Home - Where we spend our time.

I thought it might be interesting to post a few pictures of the house and us, as little of us as possible. Haha  My sister came for a visit and now that things are somewhat cleaned up it was a good time to make a few pictures, before things start to scatter. Some of the pictures aren't that good, but you can see the main things. We have been here a long time and  generally this is where we have the family Christmas,

 and so forth.  In a nut shell it's home and I hope you enjoy your visit.

I don't want to model my sister's dress.

  Poor little Henry is having to model his sister's dress that matches his own outfit. He does look good in it,  though he protested the entire time and covered his face. I am so sorry Henry, but you are the only one who can wear the dress right now, and I do want to show it off a little. These two outfits are actually made up of several pieces of the same type of old tuffed  cotton dotted swiss fabric. In order to make the two outfits, I had to cut up about 4 or 5 small dresses and shirts, using all there was. I am proud of the clothes and think they were put to good use. Soon Henry can wear his own clothes again and hopefully be on his way to be with his Izannah family.

Henry

Henry is a nice big boy about 28" to 29" tall. He is being made for a nice lady who has a big girl and she wanted to complete her family of big dolls.  Henry is a sweet, mild and gentle doll, always with a small smile for you. He is going to do me a favor soon, as I have to make the sister a matching dress to his outfit of old white dotted swiss fabric. The dress will be a lot easier than his clothes. I have worked on this simple looking outfit for awhile. I have made him some black shoes, but they are still not finished as yet. Show off my pretty suit, he says, it is just right for me. I did have a lot of thinking to do on this outfit. I didn't want it to be Victorian, but, an all white suit seems to say that. I did look up suits for 1850's boys and there were a lot of white outfits, not exactly like this one, but very dainty too with ribbons and frills. Should I go with colored ribbons or buttons

to off set the white, I asked myself, but nothing seemed right, so he has his suit of unrelieved white. He doesn't want anyone to see him modeling the dress, but I'll sneek behind his back and show you when I get finished. Happy doll making to everyone.

A Sunday Afternoon visit to some old buildings.

On a Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, we went to take the dogs out and decided to go over to the Old Lockart church and cemetery. It was founded in, I think 1883 or 85. It is a pretty little building, but in bad shape now. the window panes are made of the old bubbled glass that curves and sways when you look at it. The cemetery has a lot of old graves and some not so old. We also went over to another old building that was once a warehouse right on the railroad. It is a neat  big long old building. It's nice to still see these places, because they will be gone soon enough. I've made lots of pictures in the past. the big warehouse used to be unpainted wood and luckily I got a picture of that. It has been painted now, in ( I imagine ) an attempt to keep it as long as possible. It is still very sturdy. My husband and I have made pictures of lots of the old buildings and houses in the past, because I painted and put some of these places in the pictures. Hope you enjoy looking at them and going with us.

Going to the Union- Confederate Cemetary

 We try to take our little dogs somewhere every afternoon about 7 o:clock when it cools down a little. Sometimes its just a walk down the road, there are lots of long dirt roads here. Our house is still on a dirt road. We have gotten used to it after 30 years. The other day we drove over to the Lauderdale Union-Confederate Cemetery. Its owned and maintained by the Daughters of the Confederacy. The grave yard is near the site where the Lauderdale Springs Hospital was during the Civil war. There is a natural spring there, with water coming up out of the ground, never stopping, cold and clear. During the Civil war soldiers were brought here from all over.  Over 1100 men are buried here. Only 29 names are on tomb stones though. There is a information stand under plexiglass that tell about the men and what they died of. A lot of it was infections, dysentery

,  gun shot wounds, malaria, gangrene, and the list goes on. What a sad and miserable time in our history. It is a sad place, to walk through it and know that so many men died there on those grounds and never saw their loved ones again. We took a few pictures to share of this historic place that is so close to home.