Inkspirational Designs: Converting little knight dolls into princesses

My two little grand daughters have their birthdays within weeks of each other and since they have only just moved nearby from interstate a couple of months ago, I had very few toys for them to play with at our house. Their birthday party theme was princesses, so when I saw this wonderful 'Big Jigs' King Arthur's castle that one of my daughters pointed out, it was a no brainer to buy it for their combined birthdays.

It's biggest drawback is that it is really aimed at boys, of course being King Arthur and his knights.
I can really recommend this brand as it is a very sturdy construction.

There were 4 knights in the set as well as the king and the warlock

Little girls want princes and princesses not knights! So I set myself to convert 2 of the little wooden "waldorf doll" knights into princesses.

In order to undress the dolls, I had to remove their heads. My gosh, the dolls are so strong that I could not twist or prise the heads off and sought the assistance of my son, since hubby was doing some volunteer work in New Zealand at the time. The only way we could get the heads off was to literally cut off the heads.

No wonder the heads were so hard to get off, they were doweled in. That makes them well nigh indestructible for the rough handling they'll get from the kids!!!

So using the original clothing as a basis for the pattern and sizing, I proceeded to make up the dresses and a cloak from scraps of fabric left over from previous projects.

I burnt the edges using candle flame to stop the fabric fraying.

I could have machine stitched the dresses, but it was almost as fast to hand stitch such little things especially if changing cotton colours each time, plus I can catch up with a daytime tv show I might occasionally watch.

Once the dresses were made and some embellishments glued or sewn on, then I had to wait for hubby to come back to reattach the heads. He drilled out the original dowels and we glued in some new dowels.