New frontiers in dressmaking
Because of my doll's seated position, making her bloomers presented a challenge in spatial and architectural thinking / construction. Susanna Oroyan, doll-making maven, writes in one of her books that it is wise to put underwear on your dolls, because everyone invariably upends your doll to see what they have on their bottoms. And it's true, they do! To make all the underwear my dolls are endowed with, whether it is period or not, I am cutting up a set of vintage linen napkins and their tablecloth, kindly donated to the dollmaking cause by a generous friend. In a way, this underwear is in period, since it is made from linen, but up until the 1800's people didn't really wear underwear as we know it. They just wore shifts/shirts and not much on the bottom, if anything. After puzzling over how to make the crotch for the bloomers, I cut a generous seat seam in the linen, sewed up the legs and then fitted them on and sewed the rest of the seams in their places, righ