Duplicating Donna’s Jacket with Simplicity 1242 and an Inspiring Woman, Ida B. Wells #Sewing #WomensHistory

A doll of African American complexion with her naturally curly hair up in a bun, graces the turquoise blue background, wearing a multicolored floral sheath dress with a tiny Barbie-sized ruffle at the bottom. And over the top of her sheath dress is a lovely bright yellow woman's simple business jacket with curved openings at the bottom of the front of the jacket and three-quarter length sleeves. To the left of the doll, text reads, "Ida B. Wells doll" with an arrow pointing at the doll Chelly Wood has re-named "Donna." On the right hand side of the frame are two doll clothes patterns, Simplicity 1242 (with an arrow pointing at the view D jacket) and Simplicity 4883 (with an arrow pointing at the View 1 sheath dress worn by an artist's rendition of the Ideal Tammy doll). — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

As I’ve said in my earlier blog posts, I was so moved by the people I met in Chicago at the IANDS conference, that I created doll clothes to represent each of the people I met while I was there.

This doll is meant to represent a woman named Donna. I worked with her in the IANDS bookstore about three times, as a volunteer, and each time, I found her pleasant and helpful. But on the last day of the conference, I’ll never forget the outfit she was wearing! It was a beautiful floral print dress with a yellow lace jacket over the top.

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The View D jacket pattern from Simplicity 1242 has been cut from two different fabrics. The lining fabric is cut from a multicolored floral pattern cotton; the outer fabric is cut from bright yellow fabric. There's also a close-up image of Chelly Wood's hand traced version of the View D jacket front pattern with its extensive dart. This is part of the IANDS Chicago trip doll clothes projects on Chelly Wood dot com. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

As I’ve said before in other blog posts, I hate using a facing! It never fits right on a Barbie-sized jacket. And unfortunately, the jacket pattern I wanted to use came with a facing.

So as usual, I scrapped the facing for the View D jacket from Simplicity 1242 (which was numbered Simplicity 6208 back in the “olden” days), and instead, I gave this jacket a lining.

But unfortunately, I did not own any yellow lace. So I went with what I had, some bright yellow cotton, which you can see in the image above. And since my pattern was uncut, I also traced my jacket patterns.

Photocollage shows the real Chelly Wood (not the doll) drawing darts on her View D jacket front, cut using a traced pattern from Simplicity 1242. Figures 1 through 4 show her drawing the darts and folding the jacket front to sew the dart. In Figure 5, she cut the excess fabric from a dart. In figure 6, darts look very evenly sewn to the front of the jacket. In Figures 7 and 8, as we try to sew the back to the jacket front, we see that the two do not match. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

I very carefully drew my jacket’s dart lines, using my lightbox and my Dritz fabric pencil. Then I sewed exactly along the line I had drawn for each dart, for both the front left side and the front right side, on both the outer garment and the lining.

But by the time you get down to Figure 7 in the step-by-step diagram above, it becomes clear that the jacket front and the jacket back do not match up. I was not going to be able to use these, even though I had been very careful with my darts, my traced pattern, and my stitches.

What gives?

Why my jacket front and back did not match: I have sewn the darts incorrectly ORThe original pattern has a flaw in the design OR My traced pattern was slightly off -- These reasons are offered as a bulleted list, surrounded by geometric shapes and threads. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

One of those must have been true.

I had been careful… Really careful! So I started thinking that maybe #2 was the problem. The pattern itself was flawed. I took a few measurements of the original pattern, compared them to my traced pattern, and yeah… The pattern itself seemed to be flawed.

So I re-designed the pattern on graph paper, creating my own version (which is shown in Figure 8 up above), making a pattern with the same basic shape, but taking careful measurements all around my dart, to make absolutely, positively sure that my side seams would match. And after I had started over, cutting out my pieces all over again, sewing the darts, and then stitching it all up…

Voila!

Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

So while it’s nice to be able to follow an original pattern, it’s even better to be able to make significant alterations — to even re-design a flawed pattern — when need be. (And maybe it wasn’t flawed. But honestly, I kind of think it was…)

Now before I end today’s blog post, I want to point out that my handmade sheath dress (which is from a different vintage pattern — Simplicity 4883 for Ideal Tammy) and the jacket from Simplicity 1242 are being modeled by an Ida B. Wells doll from Mattel’s Inspiring Women collection.

If you don’t know who Ida B. Wells was, I recommend that you take a moment to read the Wikipedia article about this amazing woman! She’s truly an American hero, worthy of our admiration, not just in terms of her natural beauty, but more importantly, for her many accomplishments.

Most notably, she was a reporter who wrote with bravery and honesty about the period in the south of the United States, when innocent people of African heritage were being lynched (hung until dead), a gross racial injustice that is not being taught in schools in many republican states today, due to the political climate in America.

And I chose this doll to represent Donna, a woman I met at the IANDS conference in Chicago, because a.) it takes courage to talk openly about one’s near-death experiences, and Ida B. Wells was a woman of great courage, b.) Ida B. Wells lived in Chicago, where Donna is also from, and c.) while Donna had short-cropped hair instead of longer hair pulled into a Victorian bun, I thought the doll representing Ida B. Wells offered a reasonable rendition of the woman I met at the conference, when compared with other dolls from my collection.

One of the things I loved about Donna was her slightly greying hair. I, myself, have chosen to allow my hair to go from strawberry-blond to white. And when people ask me who colors my hair, I say with pride, “God does.” So I immediately admired Donna because she, like me, lets God color her hair!

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Chelly Wood and the ChellyWood.com website are not affiliated with the pattern company or companies mentioned in this blog post, but Chelly finds inspiration in the doll clothes designed by these pattern companies. To purchase patterns from Simplicity, McCall’s, Butterick, Vogue, or other pattern companies shown and discussed in this blog post, please click on the links provided here. These links below the “Disclaimer” section do not help raise money for this free pattern website; they are only offered to give credit to the company that made these patterns.