Tips for Dressing Daughters
We’re about to start dressing our own little girls for a new interpretive season, and we thought it might be fun and useful and instructional to do a quick series on Dressing Girls… you’re welcome to sew along if you like, or come back to these posts as needed. Subscribe to the blog updates (see the side-bar) and you’ll get each “episode” delivered to your inbox.
First, though, a few tips on general attitude and how to make the good stuff happen. It is entirely possible to dress our girls so well, you could transport them back in time and expect them to excite no notice whatsoever.
Of course, these are the sort of hooligans I’m working with…
(Twirl-ability is an obligatory function of all mid-century girls clothing. Always. Even if you’re just going to the neighborhood park.)
Help your girls pinpoint the mid-19th century look by correcting these commonly-seen problems:
Make it Easy
One-fabric dresses, with the skirts attached directly to the bodice, seem to be the most common garment for girls in the mid-19th century. They are also the most convenient for dressing, and easiest to wear during active play or work. Do your girls a favor, and dress them in one-piece dresses with a gently fitted waist. Cut the skirts in widths similar to their petticoats (70″ for bitty girls, 90″ for girls in childhood, 120″ for tween and young teens, 140″ to 180″ for teenage girls). They’ll look wonderful, and have the freedom and ease they need for a great event or interpretive day.
Start With Good Shapes
If you don’t start with good historic shapes, it’s very hard to get a good historic result! You’ll be happiest with a dress pattern that also focuses on historic techniques. When you combine historic shapes, historic techniques, and historically-consistent fabrics, your girls are always going to look their best. Visit our Shop to view our line of historically-accurate patterns for girls.
Fiber Sense
Use 100% natural fibers for your girls! All-cotton prints in period designs and colors, or good grades of tropical and summer weight wool in solid colors, will keep your girls accurate and comfortable year round. Do not dress girls in man-made fiber blends! It’s both a history faux pas, and a modern health and safety danger.
Anticipate Growth
In the mid-century, girls did tend to grow up. Oddly enough, ours do, too! Historically, dresses were designed to grow with girls, and we can use the same tricks today! Growth tucks are a great way to extend the skirt length potential of a dress, and period techniques for faced waistbands allow you to hide extra bodice length in the waistband against future body growth as well. Use both to get the most out of your girl’s dresses. Our Sewing Academy/Historic Moments patterns do teach the historic techniques you’ll need.
During the Dressing Girls Sew-Along here on the Sewing Academy, we’ll also take a look at recycling things you may have already made, or purchased used from another family. Our youngest is a spritely, slender thing, more-so than either of her elder sisters, so re-cutting this handed-down dress is on the list:
Add Skirt Support
Girl’s clothing works over a system of skirt supports similar to an adult woman’s clothing. Your little girl needs petticoats! Cut full (70″ for bitty girls, 90″ for middle-size girls, and 120″ or more for older, teen girls), then hand-gathered to a fitted waistband, petticoats will do more to improve the look of her clothing than just about anything else! Petticoats are inexpensive, too (under $5 complete in an inexpensive white cloth). One or two petticoats, well starched and worn alone or over a small cage (or corded petticoat for the pre-hoop years) give her the right skirt shapes.
Watch Your Hems
Photographs from our era show a wide range of girls’ dress lengths, but they tend to fall between the upper calf and middle/lower calf for girls under 13 to 15 years. Petticoats and drawers should all be hemmed in the same general range (not designed to peek below mid-calf). Keep in mind that ankle-length drawers are not a mid-century style! It is perfectly acceptable for a girl’s stockings to show to mid-calf. Too-long hems hamper a girl’s ability to play and do active work, and are not consistent with the aesthetic of the period.
Get a Good Ratio
As with adult clothing, undergarments and pinafores (see our free patterns here!) should be the main focus of your young lady’s wardrobe. If funds are limited, you’ll get more good use from one dress, paired with three sets of undergarments and three inexpensive pinafores, than from three dresses and one set of undies! Be sure she has enough underwear for a fresh set each day of your longest event, plus one for spare. (Petticoats can be worn several days running, so she’ll need only one set of those.)
When it’s all put together, you end up with “history kids” who walk around with this sort of happy:
And of course, always study as many original images and extant garments as you possibly can! It’s exciting to see snapshots of living history children, and realize: we look just like the Original Cast!
