1865 Dress Made in 3 Parts

Source: mfa.org via Dixie on Pinterest

Isn't this the most scrumptious dress?  Imagine wearing that to a 4th of July party!

Museums often have outstanding antique clothing collections.  This dress is from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Read the museum description of this dress made in three parts.  This outstanding design uses two colors and the extensive use of pattern repetition through the use of trim.

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Buying Reproduction Fabrics for 19th Century Inspired Doll Dresses

Izannah Walker inspired doll 
by Dixie Redmond
www.northdixiedesigns.com

When they saw my latest Izzy's dress, someone asked, "Where do you get your fabrics?"   And I thought I would share the answer here.  I have a great local store that stocks retired cotton quilting fabrics at a discount.  So I buy a lot of my fabrics there.  I search through the bolts looking for words like "Bonnie Blue" or "Judie Rothermal" or "Old Sturbridge Village" printed on the selvedge of the bolts of cotton fabric.   I've found some wonderful ones.  But sometimes, when I am looking for a particular color, or a particular scale of printed reproduction cotton fabrics, I have ordered from these three places: 

 Quiltbook.com

You send an email to the owner to order fabrics here, there is not an online cart.   But on the other hand, you get kind personal service.  So it's a trade-off.   Click the fabrics to go to the sites.

Nauvoo Quilt Company on Etsy

I found this shop through one of the students in my Izannah Walker Workshop.  Search for Civil War fabrics and you'll come up with some wonderful choices.   I like how she has a ruler on the fabric for thinking about scale.

Reproduction Fabrics

This is a great site, too.  But ask about the scale of the fabric before ordering. Sometimes the scale of the image online is smaller than the actual fabric, so ask about scale before ordering.  But you can search their site by color and time period, which is wonderful.

 

 

Some fabrics have a  better drape than others, and I am trying to pay attention to which fabrics have the best drape for small sized dolls.  The Susannah 1848 line of fabrics at Quiltbooks has a beautiful drape for smallish antique inspired dolls.    If you know of a good source, or a good line of fabric that drapes well, please share.

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Antique Doll Patterns

13" Alabama Baby 

courtesy  Withington Auctions

Quite a few patterns based on antique dolls have been featured here.   We've talked about Columbian dolls and Izannah Walker dolls and Maggie Bessie dolls.  If you know of any other excellent patterns based on antique dolls, please either contact Dixie or leave a comment below.  In the meantime, you can see posts on antique doll patterns here.

Use of Twill Tape in Antique Doll and Reproduction Doll Clothing

 

The Maida Dolls group has been discussing twill tape.  What is twill tape, you ask?  Twill tape is a woven trim, sometimes made of cotton, sometimes linen, which can be used for drawstrings, dress ties, caps, etc.   If you study the Workwoman's Guide mentioned in the previous post, you will see that many of the garments from the 1840 book used ties or tapes for garment closures.   "Tapes"  - in our case twill tape -  can be used in a casing to create a drawstring neckline which is adjustable. 

The dress of my doll below is made in this way.  

I used twill tape from William Booth Drapers as a drawstring in the neckline of dress above.   It worked great.  The roll of tape is shown below as it came to me.  They're one of the few places that have 1/8" twill tape.

Edyth O'Neill shared a dress with me to study that had a kind of tape used to stabilize the curved seams to keep them from stretching out.

Twill tape is also used as a base to which other things can be sewn for millinery, to cover the hoops of hoops skirts in the 1800's, and to tie corsets tightly.  You can buy  modern twill tape by the yard or by the roll.  The roll below was purchased from twilltape.com.

Twill tape can be used in many ways, even  as a decorative element.  Try it, you'll like it! 

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