Elizabeth, not a queen but still some fiddly bits

One of my old school friends asked for a character I am not at all familiar with from the computer game Bioshock. Her name is Elizabeth and she was trapped in a library apparently. My friend very kindly sent me some good shots of what Missy Liz looks like in costume to help me work out how to make her.

This image was particularly useful to me as a reference image:

 

I think I should let you know I don't play computer games (I hardly think scramble and words with friends count) and I have only vaguely heard of Bioshock

The first two decisions I had to make were the colour/fabric to use and what to do about the skirt.

The colour was a question because I did not have anything the correct shade of blue, fortunately my friend was quite easy going about what colour I could choose so I chose a fabric that was velvety which I particularly liked for Elizabeth for some reason.

For the skirt I needed to decide if I was going to give her legs or not. I could have just made a skirt which was just a cone of fabric. I didn't like this idea somehow so I decided her legs would be the same colour as the skirt. I also decided I would attach the skirt on after I'd made the main doll.

As always the first stage was the planning sketch.

After that I was on to cutting out fabric.

When I make dolls I am quite lazy in some ways. Having started I am very reluctant to undo something I've sewn or retreat if something goes wrong. I misaligned some of the sleeve fabric and just found work arounds rather than go back and correct. The same happened when I realised you don't really see Elizabeth's ears under her hair. I just added some bits and thought what the heck.

As is often the case before I knew it I was sewing the edges up and working on turning Missy Lizzie back the right way round. I always feel this stage looks a bit like the Gorignak scene in Galaxy Quest when the transporter turns the pig inside out. It looks awful but it's also interesting to see what happens behind the scenes (to me anyway).

So crafters out there, do you get to a certain point before bed and think oh well it's fine I'll just finish up and THEN go to bed. So do you do that and either it takes far longer than you anticipated or something goes wrong and you have the option of completely going without sleep or going to sleep anxious about how to fix your problem? No? Just me then, OK, haha :D

Anyway so I got to the turning inside out stage and I couldn't get Elizabeth's left arm and hand to turn the right way out. I tried and tried and finally had to undo the stitching on the cuff and hand and chuck the whole bit away. It was a traumatic moment. Also distressing was realising the legs were shorter than I wanted.

The upside to refusing to go back is you get inventive. I decided that I could manage to sew a new hand back on by making it separately turning it inside out and then stitching it and the cuff onto the right side out sleeve. This was fiddly but less bad than I expected. The legs I decided to extend slightly by making fake leather boots that I sewed onto the legs. It was only a small extra height but I also liked that it gave Elizabeth boots.

Having sewn boots onto Darth Vader, I used what I learnt there and inspiration from a model of Elizabeth that someone had analysed online to use the side effects of sewing boots on to make a deliberate effect.

The first stage was stuffing the legs. I then made the boots go round the leg with the seam at the front with a slight v at the top to use the stitching to pretend to be lace up boots. Sadly I foolishly didn't take a picture of them as I was rather proud of them.

That done I worked out the skirt. I pinned it on in one piece. I had intended to do this with the body unstuffed but I decided I could sew better with the body stuffed so I did that first.

 

I started with the back and cut the v for the corset shape and sewed down the waistline and worked my way round to the side. I then did the same on the front. Finding it hard to get the fabric to lie properly along her side I ended up completely cutting through the fabric that wrapped around one side and then I could make the fabric lie properly on both sides. Then I hemmed the whole skirt.

Towards this point I posted a picture online and a new acquaintance had suggested the ears were too big. While they were the normal size for the standard pattern, I was starting to feel that I didn't quite like how they were coming out. While I wasn't willing to go as far as my friend suggested I did do some tucking and this did improve her appearance.

All in all I think it came out rather nice.

The final thing I did was add on her tiny silver thimble on her hand by embroidering with metal silver thread. I understand she lost a finger and wears the thimble over it.

Epilogue

Elizabeth was posted off to her new owner as normal. A little while later I received a rather lovely missive from Miss Elizabeth, which I reproduce below.