Last Monday we learned that Mary McLeod Bethune was “a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader” (Library of Congress) associated with African American leadership in education, women’s suffrage, and the founding of the United Negro College Fund. An impressive resume, if ever there was one.
If you’d like to learn more about Mary McLeod Bethune, please go back to read last Monday’s blog post and visit some of the links I gave you there.
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Having served as a public school educator for 32 years before I finally retired, I found myself dwelling upon the accomplishments of Mary McLeod Bethune throughout the week. I felt inspired to re-create the clothing that appeared in the photo of Bethune with her students.
My first goal was to re-create the long skirts worn by the young women who stood at the back of the lineup, in the photo below. As you view this photo, pay careful attention to how each girl is dressed, and really zoom in on the older girls, who are at the very end of the line.
You can click on the photo itself to access a larger JPG image:
Do you see how the skirts get longer as the girls get older? The girls at the far end of the lineup wear skirts as long as their teacher’s.
So I studied Mary McLeod Bethune’s skirt for a while, comparing it to the doll clothes patterns I already own. My hope was to find a pattern I could either create with the pattern in tact, or alter the pattern so it would make a lovely “tulip walking skirt,” which was completely in fashion in 1905, when this photo was taken.
If you’d like to learn more about Edwardian skirts, VintageDancer.com offers a comprehensive analysis of them. This page shows images from old catalogues, while this page offers a beautiful photo of an African American woman dressed in a very unique dressy skirt from the era, which is labeled as a “wrapped skirt with buttons” (VintageDancer.com).
After doing a little study of the wonderful information and photos on the Vintage Dancer website, I decided the view 6 slip from my vintage Simplicity 4510 Barbie pattern set offered a high enough waist, along with a lovely sloping tulip shape, to make me feel confident that I could reproduce a skirt like those worn by Bethune’s oldest students.
I began working with this pattern to make a few slight alterations, in the hope that I could make the skirt fit my African American Skipper doll.
The first thing I did was to lay my doll on top of the view 6 slip’s skirt pattern from Simplicity 4510. You can see that on the diagram below in Figure 1. I was checking to make sure this pattern was close to a good fit, in terms of its length.
I also wrapped the pattern around Skipper’s waist, checking to see whether or not the skirt would need adjustments in the waist. It was a close fit, but I decided to go with it.
In Figure 2 above, I used my Dritz Fabric Pencil to draw around the outside of the black skirt, creating a lining rather than a true waistband. Figure 3 shows how I used a salad plate to draw the lining’s lower hemline.
I think you’d be surprised how often I use household items like plates and cups to make my own doll clothes patterns. I have tools like protractors and compasses, and even doll-sized French curves, but I didn’t grow up with those things. And since I started designing my own doll clothes patterns at the early age of 10, I am just used to using everyday objects to make lines and arcs on my patterns.
It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, I guess.
Once I had my partial lining cut out, I clipped the bottom of it, sewed this inner hem with a single-fold hem (but two lines of stitches), and pinned it too the outer garment along the waist area (see Figure 4).
I wasn’t sure how well this waist was going to fit Skipper, though. I mean, Barbie and Skipper have very different waist measurements! So instead of sewing the partial lining to the top of the skirt on three sides, I decided to just sew it on two sides (see Figure 5 above). That way I could try it on the doll to see whether it would fit better with a double-fold or a single-fold hem at the point of closure (note the yellow arrows in Figures 5 and 7).
I decided to close the whole thing off with a French seam running down the back. Figure 6 (scroll up to view) shows where I had to cut away a bit of excess fabric, in order to keep from accidentally locking my trapezoidal notch into the French seam!
The pink arrow in Figure 7 (scroll up to view) shows the final stitching of the French seam, which (thankfully) turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.
Since I know a lot of you don’t know what a French seam is, I’ve embedded Professor Pincushion’s “How to Sew a French Seam and Mock French Seam” tutorial below:
In case you hadn’t heard, Professor Pincushion has a new book out — well it came out a couple of years ago — and she’s a fantastic teacher, for those of you who are just learning to sew. It’s called, Professor Pincushion’s Beginner Guide to Sewing: Garment Making for Nervous Newbies, and that link will take you to Amazon where you can learn more about it.
In the end, I found that it was a lot of work, trying to make a teenage girl’s skirt from 1905 for my modern Skipper doll. Once again, I used the View 6 slip’s or nightgown’s skirt from Simplicity 4510, and in spite of the amount of time and effort that went into this skirt, I think it was really worth it.
When I bought my Simplicity 4510 pattern, it was actually missing the bodice for the View 6 nightgown or slip, so I’m glad I kept the skirt part of this garment project because I think it was the perfect skirt to re-create the fashions of the early 1900’s. Here’s how the final product turned out:
Once again, if you didn’t get a chance to read about Mary McCleod Bethune, I recommend that you go back to visit last Monday’s blog post by clicking on this link.
Questions: In the photo of Mary McLeod Bethune at the top of the page, she’s carrying a book. What book do you think it is? Just use your imagination! What type of book would she, as a person, consider important? Go back to read Monday’s blog post, if that will help.
Please leave your answer to today’s question in the comments section at the bottom of this page.
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References:
Mary McLeod Bethune with a Line of Girls from the School. [Place of Publication Not Identified: Publisher Not Identified] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2021669923/>.
Opatrny, Tova. “How To Sew A French Seam and Mock French Seam.” YouTube, 27 November 2012. Web. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zhGWD0NI5g
Sessions, Debbie and Oscar. “Edwardian Skirts History – 1900 – 1910s.” Vintage Dancer. 3 May 2021. Web. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026. https://vintagedancer.com/1900s/edwardian-skirt-history-1900-1910s/
Wikipedia contributors. “Mary McLeod Bethune.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Dec. 2025. Web. 30 Jan. 2026 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McLeod_Bethune
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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.