You remember Maud, don’t you?
Now, to give her a new lease of life, ready for a starring role in a forthcoming bestseller (my next book), she’s had a face-lift. Or rather a body-lift. A re-cover.
So what I did was make a pattern using the existing seamlines as a guide. I cut pieces of scrap fabric into rough shapes, pinned them on carefully and traced the seam lines, then added seam allowances.
I had to make a few adjustments as I went along, but really it wasn’t too tricky, although I’d suggest not trying this unless you’ve got the hang of making close-fitting clothes already. You need to understand darts and curved seams and the like.
I used really beautiful undyed natural organic linen from Greenfibres. Its a lovely fabric, I wasn’t about to use any old cheap rubbish for my gorgeous girl. She needed something simple and traditional-looking as well as non-chemical-soaked to help preserve her for another 100 years or so.
Very simply, I followed the original seams which resulted in a jacket-like bodice which was open at the front. I machine-sewed all the bodice pieces, leaving the centre front open and sewed this up by hand once I had carefully positioned the bodice on Maud, matching up the seams where I could. I then added the hip-part which was sewn up along the back seam. I hand sewed the front seam and the hip to bodice join. I simply gathered the bottom hem underneath to bring the fabric to a smooth finish without having to nail it on to the wooden based. The last stage was the shoulders – I left lots of fabric here so I could gather the loose fabric into a tight circle. I then cut out large circles of fabric and gathered the edges (like a suffolk puff / yo yo) and hand stitched them down to cover the shoulder gathers.
She’s a wee bit wrinkly and some of the seam allowances show through a bit, but on the whole I’m pretty happy with her – and she’ll definitely do well for her modelling career.
Ruth Singer 
Maud’s new do looks great! I bet that if you were to steam it a bit that all the wrinkles would disappear. Plus it’d tighten up even more around the front neck. I’ll have to keep this tip in mind when the time comes to recover my mannequin. 🙂
That looks really nicely done.
Great job! Are you sure she doesn’t want to come live in a country cottage 😉