American Girl Doll Clothing History Timeline

Here is something I made for Daisy. She has a doll—not American Girl brand, but the same size and style—which she loves to dress up, so we looked up all kinds of historical costumes that are available for those dolls (and even bought a few!). There are some amazing doll costumers. You can find very expensive, gorgeous historical reproductions on Etsy and cheaper period-style clothing from China on Ebay. I don't even know if it's worth putting up links because they are always changing, but it's easy to find beautiful things!

Anyway, I made this chart of American Girl dolls wearing clothing styles from the various eras. She loved it. And she's actually quite good, now, at pinpointing which eras various styles come from!

And here is Rosie (her doll) dressed in a few of her costumes:

Marie Antoinette :)

1920s

Junie's doll Violet wearing the Christian Dior "New Look"

Matching (Daisy put her sweater on backwards to make it match) :)

Weaving

After we learned about the fibers that make up different fabrics, we learned about how those fibers are spun and woven together to make fabrics. And of course, when learning about weaving, it is always fun to make paper baskets! These woven hearts are traditional decorations for Danish Christmas trees (my Danish grandmother had a whole tree full of lovely red and white ones) and, while they're slightly more complicated then just a regular double-sided woven paper mat, they aren't too hard. We had made them before so we were quite good at it! This template made them even easier.

After getting the hang of the basic "over-under-over-under" idea in weaving, we were ready to get a little more complicated. My friend let us borrow a tiny American Girl loom (I think it was for the Kirsten doll) that has a shuttle, beater, gears, and all the parts you need. That was really fun. We finally understood the warp and the weft and how the shuttle interacts with the threads to separate and lift them. Sebastian was probably the most persistent, but we all took turns weaving and making a couple of cute little woven doll sashes.

I can totally see why weaving is getting popular these days. It is really fun! Even on a doll-sized loom.

We also used my sari to demonstrate different ways that a length of woven fabric could be worn and tied and draped once it's made. There were a lot of draped styles in ancient times that didn't require sewing or much fastening at all!