Tiny Fashions

I had a fun crafting date this week with friends, and decided to pull out my stash of vintage fabrics, which should be inspiring for any number of crafts, but for me tend towards one kind of thing: doll clothes.

This lifelong pastime began when I was four with packing paper. My sister and I were given a whole stack by one of the movers to keep us occupied while she used the rest to get us packed up for the move onto military base housing. We drew princess dresses with thick label markers, cut them out, and then punched our Barbie dolls' arms through the billowy puffed sleeves. I was enthralled by the limitless possibilities before me.

It carried on into high school due to a subscription to Vogue and this book. I sewed clothes of my own rough designs in miniature and documented them at one point with a film camera. Probably working on costumes for my high school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream got me thinking beyond projects involving tiny scraps of fabric sewn together with a needle and thread. My best friend taught me how to use a sewing machine, and my parents bought me one shortly thereafter. But it functioned as room decor for several years since it came without a foot petal and I am slow to contact customer service about such things.

Though I now have a functional sewing machine and a serger machine to boot, I enjoy coming back to the needle and thread with scraps of fabric. The patterns and many of the fabrics are from my Grandma W's stash from the sixties, which she probably intended to use for my aunt's dolls. So these will be up for grabs soon if you know any girls still into Barbie!

This Care Bear suitcase is the one I packed for myself for every move and trip of my early childhood. It most likely contained a doll wearing a paper dress upon its arrival to Camp Lejuene, NC, which makes its current content quite fitting.