Sharing Princesses !

Forgot to mention it, but it’s National Sewing Month again – and like years past, I’m gonna try to sew every day. Monday I fiddled with more felt shoes, Tuesday I sewed a t-shirt fabric playsuit, and today, I fashioned Princess Dorrie (a customized Playmates Little Princess Belle doll) a pair of black pants from some of the fabric I scored two Sundays ago at the thrift. Since I had to reorganize the Disney Toddler doll shelf, and the Playmates dolls don’t have painted-on panties, PDorrie was in a bit of an embarrassing situation. Her skirt, while adorable standing, was simply too short to cover everything her new seated position revealed. Oh, it was knee length, and should have easily covered the essentials, but it just wouldn’t stay down. So, pants.

I used a freebie pattern I just knew would work – from Heartland Happy – and it did work, quite well. A bit big in the waist, and there’s a reason for that, more later, but otherwise nice. I even used some of that fold-over elastic successfully. It doesn’t look even and is actually rather bumpy, but it works, so I’m willing to put it in the ‘win’ column. I think I know where I went wrong with the elastic, so more experiments will soon follow. Heavens know I got plenty to fail with !

So, here’s why the pants were a bit too big. I’ve known for darn near decades now that there’s a lot of Little Disney Toddler Princess dolls out there. Playmates was first, and at one point, I had the whole set. I loved their rotating wrists and non-painted on underwear. I was really impressed when they branched out into Toddler Princes, even if you could only get them as a set. But, for some reason, Disney put an entirely different looking line in their stores at the same time – I didn’t like the look of them, and never bought any. And I was really surprised to see that my new Toddler Tiana was made by Mattel ! What happened to Playmates ? Did they go under, or just lose the license ? I regret letting her go the most, she was so cute…

Mattel didn’t have it long, because soon, Jakks Pacific’s name was on the back of the boxes. By then, I was pretty much done with toddler princesses… until they started showing up at that thrift. No rotating wrists, and by their lace and bow bedecked painted panties was the name TollyTots. Huh ? Who the heck were they ? I still don’t know, except that JPacific bought ‘em in ’08. And they seem to have most of JPacific’s doll lines now.

Anyway, now that you know all that, I can tell you that the pattern I used was for a TollyTots LDP, not an older PMates one. And the TTots dolls are slightly…smaller in the waist than PDorrie. Huh. Doesn’t make sense, I cut the pattern out correctly, used the elastic length the directions called for, why was the waist too big ? Should have fit fine, or been a twinge too small. Ah, well. I’ll try it again with some other fabric, see if maybe the stretch in the material added something to the mix. In any case, PDorrie has new pants that fit – I took ‘em in about a half-inch in the back – and I have another pattern cut out and ready to go. Tell you all about it tomorrow !

Meanwhile, PDorrie decides to try on some of PBelle’s clothes. Like hers on PBelle, they fit, but don’t really suit. Still, nice to know I can use the t-shirt pattern for the LDPs if I shorten it a bit !