At ten to eleven last night I finally finished the first little girl doll. She is just over three inches so she is probably about four years old.
She might not look like a doll dressed according to a portrait because she is a doll dressed by an interested costume historian, but also an adaptive miniaturist. (That’s me, by the way.)
She does have china painted shoes because I didn’t know which era she needed to live in until she did. Of course all of my dolls are porcelain, you can dress and undress them as often as you like. Even the smaller scales, which have their clothes sewn on them, are undressable in the future with a pair of scissors. I think a doll should be an heirloom and something you can play with.
As you can see she is wearing drawers and a shift. Because her arms are articulated you can put her arms over her head and take the shift off. I have used Broderie Anglaise, which actually was first developed in the sixteenth century, so is not completely anachronistic, though it did not become a craze in England until the Victorian era. I’ve used it because the pattern looks Tudorish to me.
The underskirt is heavily embroidered, which is correct and on a drawstring which is also correct. Tudor clothes were tied together and mostly based on rectangular pieces of cloth sewn together and many layers. Wooden buildings are actually quite warm. I was surprised when I first inhabited my writing shed to find how warm it was with the door closed, even on a cold day. On a warm day the wood soaks up the sunshine. Even I take layers off if I’m writing in there and it’s warm.
It took a good few hours to make the gown, which is, like the lady’s gown, similar to our dressing gowns, in that it is put on as you would put on a coat, and tied at the front. Tudor little girls must have learned quite young how to tie laces. I am assuming, though I have not yet found proof, that children did not need separate sleeves. By the time they reached teenage years they’d have needed the ventilation at the underarm that stopped the sleeves rotting in the absence of anti-perspirant, adult sleeves being laced over the shoulders, the lacing covered by the picadil.
I’m sure you recall that the reason I was dressing the little girl was to see if she would like the Tudor doll.
She’s considering it.
Oh yes, she would. Look! It matches her dress.
I wonder whether she likes the bigger doll better or
That’s the one!
In my thirty three years exhibiting at Miniatura I’ve given away quite a few dolls to little girls but this is the first time I’ve given a little doll to a little doll girl.
Don’t know why it took me so long.
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Thee weeks to the show. AAAAAArgh!
Details here www.miniatura.co.uk