Simple tube dresses for dolls.

 

 

 

So many dolls to dress.  When I do not find an old doll dress in my small stash of them I usually resort to a time honored way with a tube dress. Here is a lovely perfect little parian Alice  showing the new body I made for her this spring.  My friend Penny shared the sweet piece of early fabric some years ago and it has been waiting for the perfect use. The fabric was salvaged from the back of a ragged quilt.  The first step is to cut two rectangles for her sleeves and one larger one for the body of the dress.

Next sew the rectangles into 3 tubes, hemming a closing  in the center back seam.   Hem each sleeve. On each side of the dress body, make a slit longer than the sleeve will be set in, so a dart can be created on each side with the sleeve tube inserted. Be careful sewing in the sleeves, keep right side to right side. This is the only tedious part on the project.

 

It is not easy to see where to hem the dress yet, so I leave that till last. Beginning at the back of the neckline I turn under a scant 1/4 inch with a raw edge. I run a gathering thread (double thread) about 1/8 inch from the top of the fold leaving that 1/8th inch header.  By making a back stitch where I begin , leaving a few inches for a tie, and ending the same way after I fit the dress to the doll's shoulder, I have the neckline gathered and a tie on each side. Now try the dress on her and distribute the gathers. Judge where you want to make the line of gathering for the waist and make that row of little stitches leaving a tie at the beginning and after fitting the dress on her, make a tie on the other end.  Now you can see where to hem the little dress. The addition of a ribbon at the waist or an apron finishes the outfit. In this case I have given Alice the incredible tiny apron with Van Dyke points in a caramel colored print. The apron is barely over 4 inches long top to bottom!

 

 

A great many frozen Charlottes are dressed with a gathered tube and some trim added.  These are usually sewn on the doll after they are gathered on her.  I have a number of dolls costumed this way, Keep in mind the many sleeve shapes and lengths that can be used.  Bits of tatting or other trim can vary the look as will the addition of a cape or shaped apron.

 

This early doll is most unusual. The head looks like a milliner's doll having a papier mache shoulder head.  Not so.  The complete torso and head are made in one piece of wood. Some few dolls were made like this with mache or something similar molded around the wooden core of the head. That type is sometimes termed an alien head. This entire head appears to me to be made of wood as everywhere the finish coat of gesso is scuffed the wood is right there for her nose and hair and so on.  I believe her to be a transitional type  and a laboriously constructed one of which there would not have been many before the millions of papier mache heads were made.  The torso and head are all that we got. Jack carved arms and legs and I added cloth to hold them in place with out any glue or nails or such. The hair style is from the 1830's as you can see.

 

 

These dresses look alright on medium to small dolls. My large Sophia is dressed this way, better than not dressed maybe, but I think the tube dress is clumsy looking on her.  Have fun experimenting with simple sewing and great old calico.  e

 

 

 

Sewing dresses for my Izannah Walker doll.

    When I first started to collect antique dolls in the 1950's my mentor, in addition to my own mother who always loved dolls, was Stella Hart in Cleburne TX. Mrs. Hart collected and sold fine dolls and taught me so much. In her 80's then, she said she did not collect bisque dolls, as they did not seem old to her. Those were what she knew as a child. She had two beautiful old cotton dresses, both brown prints which I wished were in tatters so we could dress dolls in the fabric. Not so, they were nearly perfect. Years later while living in FT Worth, I saw the two dresses in the possession of Elizabeth Patton, another doll collector who was cutting them and I was able to buy small amounts of each. I used the prettier one on a doll and parted with her over time. But here in 2021 is a piece of the other dress still in my sewing stash and now right for an Izannah dress! It is the brown print pictured and will have an apron of an early red orange. I may bind the little apron with a bias of an early very dark brown print.

 

The dress below was finished for Charity yesterday. It is sewn by my tube dress method found else where on my blog. http://edythoneill.blogspot.com/search?q=tube+dress    A beautiful piece of orange red calico was inspiration for this one. The wonderful old print was never used, it was only a small piece given to me years ago by Connecticut dealers Barbara and Don Ladd. The apron is just laid on her lap until I extend the sashes a bit to tie in back.

This doll loves her red dress!

And here she is again with that darling antique apron Aunt Dixie gave her. 

 The above indigo dress is borrowed from a nice china head doll, and is made from early fabric bought at the Comfort Antique show quite a while back, about a dozen years.   Each scrap of these old textiles is special to me and has a story behind it.  This is so much more fun than the necessary things I should be 

doing!  e

Such a lot of dolls to look after

While my great grandchildren seem bent on demolishing their Barbies,  I spend time now and then making mine neater.  Too hot to work on my sun porch, this is what my dining table looks like.

 A beautiful Voit child with the classic leather body was an expensive doll impressively  dressed  but when I examined her I found that someone had used a dab of glue to hold her wig on, and then later someone took the wig loose and a spot of the dolls' finish was  torn away. I have meant to fix that for years.  My favorite compound for mending papier mache dolls is Elmer's wood filler. It dries a nice color too that matches the doll's composition.    A dab of the filler, left to dry an hour and then sanded, and painted with black  Liquitex artists acrylic tube paint Leaves the black pate in nice order again.

While the pretty but not really proper dress is off, the doll's beautiful white kid body is more exposed and I can see that the gussets of the elbows are very fragile.  After all this body dates approximately 1845. Some would say 1830.   I am wrapping the mid arm with inch wide strips of bias cut muslin, my standard  solution for many dolly ills.  The elbows will no longer flex as I move the doll about and dress her, but neither will the old leather give up and pour out the saw dust which will eventually rot the whole thing.   Wrapping like this does not use pins or glue (horrors) or any thing damaging to the old dolly.  A few stitches hold it in place.

The unders on this doll were never really made for her. The chemise is a full size child's garment, just folded and pinned with safety pins to hold it on the doll.  The waist band of the pantalets lacks a lot of meeting around her chubby middle.  I will look through my stash of doll unders and see if I can do better for her. Meanwhile I can rinse these nice little garments and add them to the stash till needed.

Agnes is another big heavy girl. She has sat around waiting some little touches and finally I have made the changes that make her more attractive. Presentation really  is everything!    She needed shoes which I fitted for her, and a petticoat which was lacking, and I shortened one from the stash  by making a big hand stitched  tuck all the way around, hiding it under the broad band of tucks.  I made undersleeves of old tule for her arms.

While working with Agnes I have to be careful that she does not clap her heavy china hands together and break them!  Jackie found Agnes for me early one morning at Brimfield.

Today a child size dress came from ebay.  Look at the box!  We are glad a doll or a painting was not inside as it looks like it was run over by a vehicle.  The dress is fine and Lucy likes it ever so much.

All in all a pleasant day working on the doll family.  e