a quick tutorial for those who asked how I applique my dresses onto my embroidered girls. Most of the girls come from this pattern. I applique the dress rather than embroidering it.
firstly I use bondaweb to stick my dresses down, this is because I like the raw edge but the bondaweb stops it fraying.
for this tutorial I've used a recent commission to demonstrate the method. If you're just making one dress it is easier to cut the dress pattern out of the fabric and then cut the same pattern from the bondaweb and iron the bondaweb to the back of the dress.
It's important that you don't iron the dress down at this point as the heat from the iron would either make your other embroidery lines disappear or set permanently. I stitch the dress in place first, if you prefer you could do all the other embroidering, the face, arms etc. and then pin the dress in place.
I then stitch the dress down using small stitches around the edge, you could use a running stitch close to the edge if you would prefer a neater look.
Now you can continue stitching the rest of your embroidery. You can add stitching on top of the dress, I often add french knots, in this case I added a line of stitching to look like a ribbon emphasizing the empire line of the dress.