New Princess

Well, I'm back. Sorry that I have been MIA for a couple of days. A 3500-4000 biblical exegesis paper kind of puts a halt on just about anything else. But my rough draft is in (yeah, unfortunately I still have more work to do on it) and I could do a little more crafting yesterday. I was just too tired last night to update my blog with my progress (which really wasn't that much).

Now that I have finished Belle's first dress, I have a stand for a doll for another dress, but I don't have any more of Belle's dresses which I can put on the needles. This dress, unfortunately, has the same color as the Christmas dress.

I don't know why they didn't put the three different pinks in the wallpaper picture I have, which is why the headshot from the movie. You can see the bodice is the darkest (the one it shares with the Christmas dress), the sleeves are slightly lighter, which is also the color of the skirt, and then a light pink for the shoulder drape and sleeve flounce. The lighter pink is also the accent lines you can see in the picture above.

So, with the lack of the ability to put Belle's last dress on the needles, I have started on Aurora. Her pink ball gown will be the very last dress made as the mom has told me "you can leave that one off" (AKA it may not even get made at all), but the blue ball gown was very much in queue and requested. So, that is where I started next. This has to be my second favorite of all the Disney princess dresses. And this one, I could wear if I could find it! (Too bad red heads who are fair skinned just don't look good in yellow).

So I got started on the blue ball gown. I didn't bore you this time with a ton of casting on and beginning stitches pictures. Here, I have just finised the white shoulder portion (well, mostly, it may get tweeked some before the end of the dress). I am using the same pattern for this dress as I am using for Belle's ball gown, but of course it has to be a little different, especially since Aurora's ball gown has sleeves. So instead of casting off the arm holes, I have placed the stitches on stitch holders to go back and pick up to put on the sleeves (similar to how Belle's white blouse was worked, only I'm finishing the bodice first and then going back to do the sleeves before doing the skirt).

The only problem with the stitch holders? I wasn't thinking when I put them on or when I did the next row, which added the blue for the bodice in. I had them going to the inside of the dress for a couple of rows before I painsteakingly and very, very carefully removed the stitch holders, pushed the live stitches to the outside of the dress, and put the live stitches back on the stitch holders. Whew! That was a lot harder than it sounds.

Here's what I was able to accomplish last night in the little bit I worked on the dress. Not much, but it's now on the needles. I hope to do a good chunk of work on the dresses this evening.

And a close up shot of the center of the dress. If you can see that little nob in the white, that is supposed to draw the middle of the dress together at the top. I'm still trying to figure out how to get it tight so it is pronounced, but it still seems to show on the dolls. If you are compairing pictures, yes, the shoulder drape on Aurora's dress is smaller than on Belle's dress (that's the white portion, or for you knitters following along, the garter stitch part). In the pictures by Disney, Aurora's portion is smaller. So, while the pattern called for 2 cm of shoulder drape (which is what I did on Belle), I only did 1 cm of shoulder drape on Aurora. I might go back and try to get a more defined point on the arm portion of the shoulder drape like it is in the movie, but that will have to be later after it is off the needles elsewhere.

And here it is on a doll. Yes, that is Ariel wearing Aurora's dress. I don't have an Aurora doll (yet; would love to manage to get them all before the end of this project) and my blond doll was at the bottom of the project bag. Ariel was on a stand because I did not want to have to restore her hair....again. It drapes odd because of the stitch holders for the sleeves. It will drape much better on the doll once I knit the sleeve portion.

This is the same portion done, I was just trying to get the piece to sit a little more correctly on the doll. Like I said, hard to do at this point with the stitch markers. I hope to be off the bodice (including the sleeves) by tonight, so hopefully I can get a better picture of Ariel sporting the dress.

And that's all I have. I didn't have much crafting time over the weekend because of the paper and other things. But I was determined to get something done. I know that I have a few readers out there (stats, they are great ;) lol). If you are reading, leave me a comment, even if it is just to say hi, I would love to hear from you.

187.6 DAYS LEFT!!!!!