Tea party dresses for my daughter and her American Girl

We are going to visit the American Girl store in NYC next weekend and I really wanted my daughter to have a great dress with a matching one for her doll without spending an arm & a leg.  I found this pattern free online by joining the the group The Cottage Mama Pattern Group on facebook.  It was a great tutorial and a quality dress!  Only step I did differently was use my ruffler foot, I set the top lever to 1 and the bottom one to 4 and it was a perfect fit.

Then I made the doll dress from allthingswithpurpose.com's pattern with the cottage mama's tutorial.  Only thing I would change next time is to make the bodice a bit bigger, it was pretty snug to pull on.  I also used the ruffler foot here with the top lever at 6 and the bottom at 4.  It wasn't a perfect fit but I was able to just scrunch it in no problem!  My daughter was thrilled, now she wants one for her bitty baby!!

Here is the link for the doll dress:

http://allthingswithpurpose.com/2013/01/basic-dress-pattern-for-american-girl-dolls/

Rescuing an American girl doll and her wig/hair

So we rescued/adopted an American girl doll, Rebecca, off of Craig's list and she wasn't in all that bad of shape.  She was dirty and had some scuff marks on her face that I cleaned with my Norwex enviro cloth.  That cloth also saved bitty baby numerous times, it's great because you only use water.  I also sprayed her body with Norwex mattress cleaner and she smells like new!  Now for her hair!  It was still curly but felt like it had been hair sprayed, since there were pink & blue streak spots I assumed it was colored hairspray.  It was dull, stiff and fraying at the ends.  I searched hundreds of blogs and you tube videos but was unsatisfied with the recommendations.  Some flat ironed, steamed, used oil, or fabric softener and I wasn't willing to take those risks.  I tried to wash & condition her hair with regular stuff like I did for the my little ponies, it got the color out but was still dull and fraying, not soft at all.  Here is what it looked like:

Not bad but I wanted it to feel like new for my daughter.  

I read about the downy dunk but I don't even use softener on my clothes and it just sounded like the wrong thing to do.  So I went to Sally's and bought Revlon wig shampoo and dual conditioner for synthetic hair for $8 each.

I put cool water in a bowl with the shampoo and soaked for about 10 min, using my hand to wet close to the scalp. Be extra careful not to get water in her eyes, they can rust. Then rinse with cool water.  For the conditioner you can use it as a spray or a soak.  I soaked her hair for 10 min by letting the ends soak and again just using my hands to wet the hair close to the scalp.  Do not rinse after the conditioner soak.

Then I towel dried it, combed it through in sections and set those sections in sponge curlers.  Tip:  never brush your doll's hair without spraying with water first.

Once it was fully dry I took out the rollers and her hair was soft and shiny!! Here is the final result:

I still think the ends are a bit fried looking but they are way better and I will probably try to spray them with the dual conditioner instead of water for a while.  

I don't know why there are no posts about using this conditioner for wigs! I hope this helps for those of you that are as nervous as I was to use products that could potentially wreck your dolls hair.

You can also curl your daughters hair while she's waiting!!

And since it takes longer for Rebecca's hair to dry I made them matching outfits to wear to the American Girl store!