Jane has clothes!

Considering she's been waiting about a hundred years for something to wear, I think she's probably pretty happy, even though she looks PO'd. I named her Jane after one of the dollhouse dolls in Beatrix Potter's children's book A Tale of Two Bad Mice. That was one of my daughter's favorite books when she was little and I just bought a copy for my granddaughters at Powells Books in Portland a couple weeks ago. It's a great story! Audrey loved it and I read it to her twice (at her request) and LaMont read it to her again.

Kids love repetition of stories they like. I so much prefer interesting stories like Potter's to some of the later Dr. Seuss. The first Seuss books were good: Bartholomew and the Five Hundred Hats, To Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, etc. The later ones got a little boring (for me) to read and read and read, although I did like Green Eggs and Ham.  When my daughter was ten and having a birthday sleepover, we heard all this ruckus in the kitchen at 4:00 a.m. There they were, six little girls fixing green eggs and ham  for their (early) breakfast!!!

Old Doll is Dressed

I used old linens with lovely crocheted edgings for the sleeves and trim on this dress. I buy them just for this purpose at yard/rummage sales. Often they have small tears or stains, but I can work around those. These dolls were very inexpensive and always sold without clothing; girls or their mothers were supposed to dress them, like I did this one. Now this doll is ready to go back to her home, and I will eventually dress the one that is mine, and give her a new lower leg.

Teacup Alabama Baby Gets a Dress

This is one of my "teacup" Alabama baby dolls. She's a cloth doll made from Deanna Hogan's (Blue Heron Dolls) Viola Ruth pattern, decreased to 50%. She's about 8" tall and was made almost two years ago; all this time, she's been naked and waiting, patiently, for some clothes. I like to make dolls but don't like to make clothes for them!!

However, I sewed this dress for this little doll last night, all by hand even though I collect old sewing machines. Sewing doll clothes by hand takes me back to when I did that as a child; I find it relaxing, whereas sewing small clothes on a sewing machine is NOT relaxing for me.