Tea at the Davenport Part Pinky

Don't ever ask pinky what kind of dress she wants. The answer will always be something Barbie threw up after a night of drinking tequila rose and pepto bismol after throwing a frat party at the dream house. Then you'll have to deal with the hemming, the hawing, the exasperated sighs as you try to take her down from the pink bubblegum nightmare cliff.

No, the best approach is to give her a starting point and say, do you want a dress like this. It helps if your starting point is somewhere close to where you'd like to be. Lucky for me, pinky's little heart lit up like the ghetto firecrackers my neighbors were setting off at three in the morning last night. (Yes, last night and no, I don't live in some alien world where New Year's eve came a day late.)

And the winner is . . . that sweet, adorable little yellow dress on the left with the lavender sash.

Beautiful, am I right? It's precious and feminine and frilly without the need to call the paramedics to wake you from a diabetic coma. I happen to be sitting on the perfect yellow shirting. Well, I wish I was sitting on it, then I could provide you with a picture. Instead, it's upstairs or in a box or something. The point it I have it. I also have the perfect pattern. 

I bought both this version and the ladies' counterpart from Sense and Sensibility patterns a few years ago and never did anything with them. I'd like to think they were waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect moment being right now. So yay for kind of free!

Now these patterns are geared towards an earlier impression, 1805ish vs 1820 when the Davenport House was completed but the changes are slight and will be detailed in a later post. 

The dress itself will be rather easy. Not much fitting involved, four buttons on the back, some sleeves and a pretty hem. But one can't dress regency without the proper underpinnings, even when one is a slight nine year old with long legs. So in addition to the dress itself, I'll need to make the child a chemise, at least one petticoat, and a pair of stays. Yes, stays. Tiny baby corsets. But before you report me to CPS, you should know that we're talking about a garment that's little more than a glorified sports bra, the perfect thing for a hot mess in training who has been begging for a bra since she sprouted stage 2 boobies. (Talk to her American Girls All About Me body book for introducing her to the boob stages of life.)

See? Nothing to be scared of there. Those channels you see are not the hard boning you think of when you hear the word corset. It's cording, aka yarn. She'll even thank me for it, trust. Btw, if you think those are cute, you can read all about them and peruse the website of the really talented woman who made them by clicking here.

After we finish the underthings and the dress, we'll do up the accessories. Pinky is dying for a bonnet. I think we've settled on a purple velveteen bonnet that won't look at all like something Prince was wearing while grinding on Apollonia circa 1987, I swear.

So that's it.

What do you think? Please tell me it won't end up looking like everything that was awesomely bad came down and took up residence on my poor baby's head.