1901 Doll Dress

Nelly also has a new dress! 

 

Feeling princess-y.

 

Looking forward towards the end of Victoria's reign, I wanted this dress to appear suitable for c.1901, while providing a strong contrast to both Harriet's new c.1837 look and to the two dolls' usual late 1850s attire. To that end, I decided to give her a princess-seamed dress (no waist seam or separate skirt treatment), which was in use at that period, though it wasn't the only style. The skirt is thus shaped by goring, unlike the gathered rectangles used in their other dresses. While large puffed sleeves were popular near the end of the 1890s, they did start slimming down again getting into the 1900s, so I gave Nelly's dress narrow coat sleeves. It also has a standing, self-fabric collar (which made me confront just so short her neck is), and a ribbon trim simulating a yoke. To make the tiny collar delicate enough, it's cut on the selvedge of the fabric. At some point, she will need a gored petticoat to give this dress the proper silhouette.

1837 Doll Dress

Recently finished a new dress for Harriet, my Sewing Academy cloth girl doll, intended to represent the year of Queen Victoria's accession. 

 

Partying like it's 1837.

I started with the low-neck dress from her pattern (c. 1855-65), and then made a few changes. For the bodice, I shortened it slightly at the waist, while bringing in the sides as much as possible (thereby reducing the amount of fabric in the darts: this isn't very obvious at doll scale, but the few original dresses I've examined from this period have weirdly straight bodices shaped more at the side seams than through darts or gathers).

The most obvious change in the sleeve: I used the basic straight sleeve as a size reference while scaling up an original mid-1830s sleeve draft from Patterns of Fashion I. This particular style gets less extreme after 1836 or so, so I used five rows of very close gathers at the head of each sleeve, trying to make the a more late 1830s look with a sleeve that is close-fitted just below the shoulder, balloons over the upper arm, then fits tightly over the forearm. I don't think the close-fitting top of the sleeve comes through at this scale (the finished effect looks much more c.1835 to me), but it was a weirdly-satisfying exercise to sew it this way.

Doll Reform Dress, c.1849-1855

Finally finished Nelly's reform dress or Bloomer ensemble. It's a two-piece outfit made of brown wool crepe: her usual dress made up with slim bias-cut sleeves and a shortened skirt, worn over ankle-length trousers.

Nelly's new outfit.

 The trousers are not part of her usual pattern; to make them, I lengthened the split drawers, added a cuff at the ankle, and tacked the center split most of the way closed. They close with a shell button and thread loop. The dress was made as usual, except for the shortened skirt. The dress closes down the back (doll-style) with three metal hooks and thread bars.

I didn't both making a short petticoat to wear with the outfit, since the trousers and the skirt's own body give it ample support at this small scale. The overall effect is a bit dull, so I might add some trim (or at least a nice collar and small button brooch).

Cloth Girl Doll

 Nellie and Harriet have a new friend: 

Meet Dolly!

This sweet doll is made from Liz Clark's 13" Cloth Girl Doll pattern, and with her permission will be available for purchase in the Fort Nisqually auction.

Dolly and her underthings.

Miss Dolly has a full set of historic undergarments: cotton chemise, drawers, tucked petticoat, and plain petticoat, and stout linen stays with shoulder straps.

Close-up of the hand-bound eyelets on Dolly's stays.

She has a blue print dress made with short-sleeves and a low-body appropriate to her youth, as well as a long-sleeved yoked dress in a bold red and black paisley material. An orange print pinafore and chintz half-apron will help her keep neat and tidy through her adventures. With a green print sunbonnet, blue and gold plaid shawl, warm red winter hood, and grey basque coat, Dolly is ready to play in all weathers.

Short-sleeved blue print dress with open neckline,
pinafore, sunbonnet, and wool shawl.

Yoked dress with long sleeves, plain petticoat, half apron,
grey wool coat, and red wool hood with purple silk bow.

All of Dolly's clothing are made from natural fibers--mostly cotton, with linen stays, soft wool outerwear, and silk ribbon on her hood. She herself is made of cotton, with a painted face and wool stuffing. Her clothes fasten with metal hooks and thread eyes, and the printed materials come from my reproduction fabric stash. 

Dolly in her pinafore, bonnet, and shawl.

Nelly modelling the apron, coat and hood.

Dolly's tucked petticoat ended up so stiff, that I gave her a slightly shorter plain petticoat to wear under her blue dress. The bishop sleeves on her yoked dress (red and black paisley) are a little too full for her basque, but it fits neatly over her short-sleeved blue dress, allowing both dresses to be worn in cold weather.

The tucked petticoat is made of pimatex,
and has enough body to stand on its own.

Eyelets, Rule of Three

Can you tell where I started?

SA Cloth Girl Doll

Meet Nelly's new little sister: Harriet. She is made from Liz Clark's 13" cloth girl doll pattern.

Harriet in new dress and pinafore.
Not visible: chemise, drawers, petticoat.

I don't have a lot to review here, as the pattern instructions and format closely resembles its predecessor, the cloth lady doll (15").  If you liked that, you'll like this.* The differences are in the doll size and garment types: the girl doll is two inches shorter, and her wardrobe includes children's style variations, as well as few different outerwear pieces, such as a sunbonnet and pinafore.  The girl doll pattern also has instructions for making dress and bonnet forms to display additional garments. 

The garments in common between the two dolls are nicely differentiated: the girl doll has a slightly different style of chemise, while other garments (drawers, stays) are cut in children's styles. The main reason for adding Harriet to my kit is to show the differences between womens' and girls' wardrobes.

The other notable difference is that the girl doll pattern is a pdf rather than a paper pattern.  While this felt a little weird to me, I appreciate the ability cut out pattern pieces without having to trace them.

What You Get With This Pattern: 

• 1 pdf, containing 20 pages of instructions and 8 pages of doll/clothing pattern pieces
• Patterns include the doll, a dress form, a bonnet form and the following garments: chemise, drawers, stays, petticoats, dress variations (yoked, gathered or pleated bodices cut high or low; 5 sleeves), jacket, basque, pinafore, and bonnet. 

Rating: 5 stars
Difficulty: Varies from easy to intermediate
Accuracy: High. Some background is included about cloth dolls; the clothing rings very true for girls' dresses of the 1850s/1860s.
General Impression: A nice doll, from a pattern than is easy to use and encourages customization.  In quality and user-friendliness, this pattern is the equal of its predecessor.

*I really love using Liz's patterns, finding them straightforward and intuitive to use. Occasionally, someone disagrees with me on this; check out the free compendium articles if you want to get a feel for the writing style.

Corded Petticoat for a Doll

Corded petticoat for a 15" cloth doll.

This one's of my own devising, based on my preferred method for making human-sized corded petticoats.  The petticoat is 1" shorter in length than the standard for this doll (since it's to be the lowest layer), and at 2/3 the usual width.  The material was cut three inches longer than the finished length, allowing for 2" of cording in the turn-up (and a 1/2" fold under the hem).  All machine sewn, except for the gathers and waistband.  Closes with a hook and thread bar.

Cording with a zipper foot.  I prefer this to threading the cord through a pre-sewn channel.

Close-up of cords and hem.

Two Doll Dresses

 Returning to the Historic Moments Patterns HMP-400 doll pattern, for some dress variations.

These are meant to be children's dresses, so I used to the low body pattern pieces (rounded waist option) with short skirts and sleeves.  The pink dress has cap sleeves; the blue has modified puff sleeves (instead of a ribbon, the sleeve is secured to a narrow-cut lining based on the cap sleeve outline).  Both fasten in the back with 2 hooks and eyes.

Pattern Review: HMP-400, Historic Moments Cloth Doll Pattern

As I can only wear one historic outfit at a time, I decided to make a clothing demonstration assistant.

Meet Nelly:

She's made from Mrs. Clark's "Great Aunt Maude's Cloth Lady Doll" pattern.  Her first outfit, above, consists of the chemise, corset, drawers, apron and high-necked dress (all from the pattern), with an additional apron of my own design, and a sunbonnet based on Mrs. Clark's free sunbonnet pattern (as drawn from memory, scaled down to fit a 15" doll).

Undergarments:

Accessories:

I've been enjoying making doll clothing so far.  The small pieces let me use up scraps from my other projects (this will be great with the wools and silks that aren't appropriate for my quilting activities), and they items go together really quickly.  All of Nelly's clothing has been handsewn--so far--and working on them has been a great opportunity to practice my hand-sewing in a low-stress way; doll clothing also makes for a very portable period project, and gives a great sense of accomplishment as it gets finished very quickly.  The downside to the small garments, in my opinion, is making the tiny eyelets.  Miniature piping is the other tricky bit.  For easier sewing, many of the instructions call for decorative buttons with functional hook-and-eye closures, instead of functional buttons with tiny button-holes.

The doll herself and the undergarments are made exactly as given in the instructions (save that I added a functional button and loop on the petticoat).  I think I made my seam-allowances too small on the corset, as it turned out a little loose.  It would also have benefited from some ironing during production (which it would have had, were I not sewing it in the car on my way to an event...). For the dress, I made some changes to the basic high-neckline bodice pattern.  It's gathered, rather than darted, but I didn't get the bulk down quite enough, making for a front that 'poofs' a bit above the waist.  The bishop and cap sleeve options were both among the given variants (there's also a pagoda sleeve, a puff sleeve, a bias sleeve, and with the wrapper, a coat sleeve).

What You Get With This Pattern: 

• 39-page instruction booklet
• 2 sheets of pattern pieces--done on writing-weight paper, not tissue--with pieces to create one doll and twenty garments/accessories, plus variations.  The dress pattern includes 3 bodice options and 5-6 sleeves to play with.

Rating: 5 stars
Difficulty: Varies from easy to intermediate
Accuracy: The shapes and methods are all good for the mid-19th century, based on my knowledge of women's clothing.  No pictures of original dolls are included, though the author provides some background information.
General Impression: A very complete pattern for a doll and her wardrobe: there are dress variations, underclothes, nightwear, and accessories included (no bonnets, per se, though there are two caps and a hood).  The clothes are all (almost entirely) pre-fit to the doll, making this pattern the easiest introduction to mid-century clothing that I've seen.