[Illustration]
About Dolly’s Wardrobe.
Cutting Out your Doll’s Clothes.
Whatever garment it is you are wanting to make for dolly, you should
first get a good pattern to cut it out from.
You will find that your paper pattern only gives half of the garment,
and by cutting each piece on double material you get the whole article.
For instance, if you are cutting out a chemise for dolly, the pattern
will give you half of the back and half of the front, and you will
notice that the straight edge of each portion is marked “place to
fold,” which means that you must fold your material and place these
edges along the fold, so that when you have cut out the two portions
you will have the full front and the full back of the chemise.
This rule of cutting on double material generally applies to all the
portions of the pattern, but it is not always necessary to lay the edge
against a fold, you only do this when your pattern is marked in this
way. For instance, you will have the pattern for the whole sleeve when
cutting out a frock, and by cutting it on double material you get a
sleeve for each arm.
[Illustration]
Before starting to cut out, clear your table of everything else, so
that you have a nice flat surface; and whatever you do don’t try to
cut out with a cloth on the table, or you will find you are constantly
pinning your pattern right through to the cloth, instead of to the
material only.
You will want a sharp pair of scissors to cut out well, and a good
supply of pins. You will notice that one blade of your cutting-out
scissors has a very sharp point, while the other blade has a rounded
blunt end. To cut out successfully, you must always hold your scissors
so that the blunt blade comes underneath your work. This prevents the
sharp point of the scissors from running into the material, and making
a hole where you don’t want one!
Look at each portion of the pattern carefully, and place it on to the
material according to what is marked on the paper pattern, then pin it
down securely and cut round the portion close to the edge of the paper.
Be sure you cut into the little notches that you will find cut in some
of the edges, as these will help you in putting the pieces together.
The edge that has one notch has to be joined to another edge with one
notch, the edge with two notches to another edge with two notches, and
so on.
If the material has a pattern on it, be sure that you have it the right
way up. For instance, if you are making dolly a frock out of a piece
of material with birds on it, see that you arrange the pattern on the
material so that the birds come with heads up. And also see that both
the pieces of material, if you are cutting it double, are the same way
up. Wouldn’t it look queer if it turned out that one half of dolly’s
frock—when you had put it together—had birds standing on their feet,
while the other half showed them standing on their heads!
Making Dolly’s Underwear.
Good mothers always try to have their children dressed neatly and
prettily, not only giving them nice hats and dresses, but having all
the other clothes to match. Of course, you want to be like a good
mother to dolly, but perhaps you do not know how to make some of the
things.
Well, just look at this pretty set of underwear, and read what is
written about them, and see if you can make a set for dolly.
The nightdress, chemise, flounced petticoat and the knickers are made
of nainsook, and the plain petticoat of fine flannel.
You have a little article on page 83 telling you how to cut out the
garments from paper patterns.
[Illustration]
The Nightdress.
We will commence with the little nightdress. The seams of this are
joined with what is called a run-and-fell seam. Lay the two edges to
be joined over one another, placing the edge of the upper portion just
below the edge of the under one, and run them together, about an eighth
of an inch in from the upper edge. When you have finished running the
seam, you turn the edge of the under portion over the upper edge, and
fold the seam down flat and hem it (or fell it) along. This is shown in
your illustration of the seam. The side you have hemmed is the wrong
side of the seam.
[Illustration: DOLLY’S NIGHTDRESS.]
When you have joined both the seams, make a half-inch hem round the
bottom of the nightdress, and make the very tiniest of hems round the
neck and sleeve edges.
To trim your night-gown you will want a little lace edging with a
beading at the top that you can thread a piece of narrow ribbon
through. Hem the edging along the hems you have made at the neck and
sleeve edges, then thread in the ribbons with a bodkin, and draw them
up to the size for dolly’s neck and wrists.
[Illustration: THE KNICKERS.]
The Chemise.
The chemise seams are joined in the same way as those of the
night-gown, and narrow hems are placed round the neck and armhole
edges, a little wider hem being put round the bottom of the chemise.
Trim the neck and armholes with lace edging, as you did the night-gown,
and draw up the neck only with ribbon.
[Illustration: THE CHEMISE.]
The White Petticoat.
In making the little petticoat you have only one seam to join up at
the centre back. You can use a French seam for this, and to make this
you run the edges to be joined together on the right side, then turn
your work over and run the seam down a second time. I think the little
picture will explain this quite clearly to you. The seam is shown being
run the second time, and you will see how this covers up the raw edges
and leaves you with a neat little double seam sticking out on the wrong
side of your work. This seam will be useful when you want to make dolly
frocks, etc., or anything where you don’t want to show any stitches on
the right side of your work, and yet want it very neat on the wrong
side.
[Illustration: THE FLOUNCED PETTICOAT.]
[Illustration: THE FLANNEL PETTICOAT.]
Don’t join the back of the petticoat all the way up, but leave about
two inches open at the top to form a placket. Make a narrow hem down
each of the two edges of the opening on the wrong side, then place one
hem over the other and backstitch them together across the bottom of
the placket; this will make it firm, so that you won’t tear the seam
when dressing dolly. When you want to backstitch, you start as you
would for running, but only taking one stitch at a time, and for each
stitch you put your needle back into the end of the stitch you have
just made, so that you have a row of even stitches without any spaces
between. I think the illustration will explain this to you. If you are
going to trim your petticoat with a little embroidery flounce, you
must turn a hem round it the same width as your flounce, then whip the
top of flounce to the top of the hem. How to do whipping was described
on page 60. The top of the petticoat is gathered and placed into a band
the size for dolly’s waist; putting gathers into a band was described
on page 4.
[Illustration: HOW HERRING-BONING IS DONE.]
[Illustration: A RUN AND FELL SEAM AND A SAMPLE OF BACK-STITCHING.]
[Illustration: HOW A BUTTON IS SEWN ON.]
[Illustration: A FRENCH SEAM BEING MADE.]
The petticoat is fastened with a button and buttonhole. If you do not
yet know how to make a buttonhole, turn to page 6 for this. You have
an illustration on this page showing how the button is put on. Use
a small white linen button, make a little bar of threads across the
centre, just working over and over through the button and the band,
then bring your needle out at the left end of the bar of threads and
work buttonhole stitches closely together along the bar. When you have
worked to the other end, put your needle through the button and bring
your cotton out between the button and the band, wind the cotton round
four or five times, then put your needle down through the band and
fasten off your cotton on the wrong side.
The Knickers.
In joining up the little knickers you must first join each of the leg
seams, then you join the two legs together from the front to the back,
leaving a placket at the back as you did in making the petticoat.
Finish the placket as before, then make a narrow hem round the top of
the knickers, and thread a piece of tape through this to tie round
dolly’s waist.
Gather the knee edges and place them into bands, and trim with a narrow
lace or embroidery edging. Perhaps you will like to feather-stitch the
bands; this stitch was described on page 7.
The Flannel Petticoat.
Now take the piece of flannel for your other petticoat. The seam of
this has to be joined in a different way to the other garments you
have been making. You first run the two edges to be joined evenly
together, then fold them over and herring-bone the raw edges down flat.
Herring-bone stitch is worked from left to right; you hold the edges of
the seam down, and first take a little stitch below the edges, and then
one just above, putting the stitches fairly close to each other so that
the threads cross evenly. If you don’t feel quite sure of this stitch,
take a small piece of flannel for practice and copy the little picture.
Then, when you can work the stitch evenly, you can do your seam.
Place the top of the petticoat into a band and finish with a button and
buttonhole. You will see that little pleats are made instead of gathers
to bring the petticoat to the size of the band; the pleats set better
in the flannel than gathers.
Finish the bottom of the petticoat with a hem and tuck. How to make a
tuck was described on page 18.
The set of underwear illustrated was made for a doll 18 inches high,
measuring from the top of the head to the sole of the foot. For this
size set, about one yard of nainsook and a quarter of a yard of flannel
will be sufficient. Two yards of lace edging, a yard of embroidery
edging and two yards of bébé ribbon will also be needed.
A Frock and Coat for Dolly.
Making the Frock.
If you haven’t made dolly any dresses before, a simple yoked pattern
like the one she has on in her picture will be an easy pattern to start
with.
You will want about a yard of some pretty soft material. A fancy
delaine or creponne with a pretty floral design on it would look well,
or you may prefer to have a plain material. A yard of lace and two
yards of bébé ribbon will also be required if you are going to trim
your frock exactly like the one in the picture.
Carefully cut out all the pieces you want to make the frock. You will
find out how to do this on page 83. When you have all the pieces cut
out in the material, take the yoke portions of the pattern and cut them
out again from a little piece of nainsook or something that will do to
make a lining.
Join the side seams of the skirt with French seams, then cut a placket
two inches long in the centre of the back part of the skirt, and finish
it as you were told how in the article on making dolly’s underwear.
Now take the dress yoke portions, and join the shoulder seam. Just an
ordinary little run together seam on the wrong side will do for these,
as you will remember we are going to line the yoke.
[Illustration: You can see here how pretty the frock is.]
Gather the top of the front of the skirt, and draw it up to the size of
the lower edge of the front of the yoke. Place the edge of the yoke and
the edge you have gathered together just as if you were going to make
a seam (be sure you put the right sides of the material inside) and
backstitch along firmly.
Turn in a quarter-inch single turning, from the neck down to the lower
edge of each of the backs of the yoke, then gather the backs of the
skirt and join them to the yoke as you did the front.
Join the lining yoke portions together, turn your dress on the wrong
side, and place the lining yoke over the dress yoke, so that the edges
of the seams come inside. Turn the lower edges of the lining yoke in
and hem them along to the back of the gathers, making it all neat
inside, and in the same way turn in the straight edges of the backs
of the lining to meet the single turnings you made on the dress yoke;
oversew these edges together.
[Illustration: MAKING FRENCH KNOTS.]
You will notice that the top edge of your sleeve portion is curved up
much higher one side than the other; the high side has to come on the
shoulder, and the lower side underneath the arm. You will have to be
careful in joining up the sleeves, that in the second sleeve the high
side comes the opposite side of the sleeve to what it does in the first
sleeve, so that you have one sleeve for the left and one for the right
arm.
Join up the sleeves with French seams. Take your little cuff band,
fold it in half and join up one side with a single seam, so that it is
joined in a circle. Gather the bottom of the sleeve, until it is the
same size as the cuff. Place the cuff over the bottom of the sleeve
(with the right side of the material inside), and backstitch the
gathered edge to the edge of the cuff. Fold the cuff piece in half over
the gathers right round, then turn your sleeve on the wrong side, and
hem the other edge of the cuff to the back of the gathers. Make the
other sleeve in the same way.
To put the sleeves into the dress, first gather the tops, until they
are the size of the armhole of the frock.
Place the short part of the sleeve over the skirt seam, so that it will
come under dolly’s arm, and place the sleeve seam to the seam joining
the yoke to the skirt at the front. Make a seam of the armhole and the
gathered edge of the sleeve. To neaten the armhole seams, bind them
with narrow tape or ribbon.
Now you are ready to turn up the bottom of the frock. Measure dolly
from her neck to where you want the bottom of the frock to come. Then
measure the same distance down from the neck of the frock in front, and
turn up a nice wide hem evenly all round.
If dolly’s frock is of plain material, instead of just hemming the hem,
you might like to finish it with French knots along. You must work
these with embroidery thread, and you have a picture showing how the
knots are made.
Bring your needle up through the double hem on the right side, hold the
thread down with the left hand thumb, and pick up a tiny stitch along
the hem, just where the thread comes out; now, with the right hand,
wind the thread round the needle (just as it is in the picture), pull
your needle out, and you will find you have made a little twisted knot.
Put your needle down through the hem again close to the knot, and bring
it up a little further along the hem, ready for the next knot. Make
your knots equal distances apart all round. This is a very good way
of finishing any hem, where you do not want a row of hemming stitches
showing on the right side.
Bind the neck of the frock with a narrow strip of the material.
Divide the lace into two equal lengths, then cut one length in half
again. Pleat the longest piece into the neck of the dress, and one
short piece into each cuff. Loop your ribbon up into a little rosette,
leaving one or two long loops hanging, and place this on the left side
of the yoke. Fasten the frock with buttons and buttonholes at the back.
Making the Coat Dolly wears on page 82.
Serge would be a good material to use. Half a yard would be sufficient
to make it for an 18-inch doll, the size of the one in the picture.
Two yards of a tiny white braid were used to trim the coat.
When you have carefully cut out your coat pattern, join up the
under-arm and shoulder seams. To join coat seams you must just place
the two edges to be joined together evenly, and backstitch them
together on the wrong side. To neaten the seams inside the coat, open
them out flat and bind each of the raw edges separately. To get them
quite flat you will have to press them with a hot iron.
The coat sleeve has two pieces, so you will have two seams to join
for each sleeve; join them just as you did the shoulder and under-arm
seams, and be careful to get one sleeve the reverse way to the other
one.
Now take the front facings, lay them on to the right side of the fronts
of the coat (you will see they are just the same shape as the fronts at
the outer edges). Backstitch these pieces on to the fronts all round
where the edges meet the coat edges, then turn the facings inside the
coat. Bind the straight raw edges of the facings that come inside the
coat. Turn back the top of each front to form a rever.
Turn a single turning half an inch wide round the bottom of the coat,
and backstitch along about a quarter of an inch in from the fold; bind
the raw edge of the turning inside the coat. Finish the wrist edges of
the sleeves in the same way, and put them into the coat as you put in
the dress sleeves; they will need very little gathering.
Cut a second collar out of a piece of soft sateen or lining, place the
two pieces together and backstitch round three of the edges, leaving
the curved neck edge open. Turn the collar inside out, pushing out the
corners carefully. To join the collar to the coat, seam the neck of the
coat to the neck edge of the lining of the collar, then turn the neck
edge of the collar in over this seam and hem it along neatly.
Put the braid round all the edges of the coat as shown. Using white
cotton, hold the braid along the work, and sew it on with small running
stitches along the centre of the braid.
Make three buttonholes on the right front of the coat, and sew buttons
on the left front to correspond.
[Illustration: This is the Peacock Cloth. One Peacock is standing on
the top of a wall, while the other struts about on the grass and shows
off his splendid feathers. Isn’t it pretty?]
A Chapter about Pretty Oddments.
A Peacock Cloth.
THE sight of these pretty peacocks makes you long to sit down and start
working them, I am sure, and when worked on a square of white Hardanger
canvas, they really make a most attractive little cloth or table-centre.
The cloth in the picture was about 12 inches square when hemmed, but
you can make it just what size suits you best; this will, of course,
greatly depend on what you want to use it for.
There is one thing, however, that you must be very careful about, and
that is that your piece of material is perfectly square, and not wider
one way than the other. Also be sure you allow about an extra 1½ inches
all round to the size you want the cloth to be when finished, so that
you can have a nice wide hem.
You must first hemstitch your cloth all round, and you learnt all about
how to do this on page 30.
[Illustration: You can count the squares in this Peacock with tail
outspread.]
The peacocks are worked in cross-stitch with J. & J. Baldwin’s Beehive
Shetland Wool, in a crimson shade. If you are making your cloth out of
Hardanger canvas, you will be able to work the crosses very easily.
When working on the Hardanger canvas, you just make your crosses over
three threads of the canvas each way.
I think you will find it quite easy to count the crosses from the
diagrams given, and the best way to make sure of getting the peacocks
nicely even in the corners, like they are in the picture, is to count
the number of open squares, from the corners of the diagrams to the
commencement of the designs, and allow three threads for each square
on your canvas. For instance, taking the peacock on the left of your
cloth, you will need to start on the sixteenth square up from the lower
hemstitched border, and one square to the right of the side border.
[Illustration: Here is the Peacock with his tail drooping.]
Remember, if you start the first cross right and work your crosses
evenly, the design must come out even; all you have to do is to see
that you don’t go over more than three threads of canvas for each cross.
This design would look very well on a cushion. In that case, the
cushion cover could be made of serge, or of crash, or of linen. Crash
is very easy to work on, and washes well. If the material is so fine
that it tries your eyes to count the threads, then it is easy to tack
Penelope canvas over the material, and work the cross-stitches on this,
drawing the canvas threads out when the work is finished.
Some Pretty Bead-work.
There are very few little girls—or big ones either—who are not fond of
beads. There is something so fascinating, isn’t there, in seeing what
pretty things we can make by threading them. And there are so many
lovely ways in which you can use beads.
[Illustration: GREEN VENETIAN AND SMALL CRYSTAL BEADS.]
You see the picture on page 98, showing four little rows of beads.
Well, each is a section of a pretty chain, either of which any little
girl could make. The top one is made of tiny metal beads and shell
beads. There are 12 tiny beads, then 3 shell beads, all the way along.
The next chain shows beads of four different sizes, some dark and some
light. This is part of a lovely, long muff chain. Just below is another
chain, which is a very simple arrangement, being simply 12 metal beads,
then 1 ordinary coral bead. The bottom chain of the little group is
made of small, dull blue beads—24 are threaded, then 2 little pink
ones, next 1 deep coloured pearl bead, 2 pink, 24 blue, and so on.
[Illustration: OF SMALL PALE BLUE AND PEARL BEADS.]
The picture above shows a pretty necklace made on 2 threads. You thread
the tiny beads on single threads, then when you come to a larger bead,
you put both threads through the same bead. The 5 very big beads are
green Venetian beads, and look so pretty.
Another necklace worked on 2 threads is also shown. The beads here
are pale blue, with a small pearl here and there. Both threads are
put through the same beads, until you come to the front part. There
they are divided, and more put on the lower thread, to make the little
loops, then both are threaded through the same bead again. This is done
7 times, to make 7 loops, then for the remainder all the beads are
threaded on 2 threads.
[Illustration: FOUR SIMPLE BEAD CHAINS.]
The upper picture on page 99 shows sections of 3 chains made of small
beads. These are made on a bead loom. On these looms you can make
lovely things, and the beads to use are Venetian Iridescent, Cut Tosca,
or No. 8 Cut Metal. The work is very easy, and is done as follows:—
Always cut one more warp thread than the number of beads to be used in
width, for instance, if the width of work is to be 6 bead wide cut 7
threads. Also in making necklaces cut the thread several inches longer,
so as to prevent joining and to allow for the fastening on of the snap.
[Illustration: CHAINS MADE ON A LOOM.]
After cutting threads, commence to tie all threads together at one end,
fix this on the nail on the spool and then place each of the threads in
rotation on the notches of bridge, carrying the threads to the opposite
bridge. Then place the threads in same rotation on the second bridge;
now draw the threads tight and with the remains of length tie on round
the end of loom and fix in and around the pegs. This is called the
warp. You now get your thread for threading the beads, and tie the end
at the first or left-hand warp, thread the same number of beads in the
way you want the first row made, and push them up between the warps,
and repeat this again and again until the design is finished.
[Illustration: A BEAD LOOM.]
Pretty Things in Woolwork.
Have you ever burnt your finger? If so, you know just what it is like,
and you don’t want me to tell you how it feels! When you have once had
a burn or a scald, you are very careful not to get another if you can
help it, and you won’t want anyone else to burn themselves, I know.
Has Grandmamma a kettle holder? She certainly ought to have one,
because it is really a nasty thing to pick up a hot kettle without a
holder. You just want to drop it at once! Suppose you start right away
to make a kettle holder. I mean a really pretty one, of course, that
will be delightful to look at, as well as useful.
[Illustration: Here is a pretty Kettle Holder.