A Whole Variety of Fashion Doll Patterns
Forty some years ago I opened my first sewing shop in my little home town. I was trained as a teachers aide but after many months of searching and applying for work, I was still jobless. My unemployment was about to run out and I had been supplementing our income by doing sewing and alterations out of my dining room. I was fortunate to have several good customers who kept me busy most days but it meant putting my machine, ironing board, and sewing supplies away every night and taking it all out again the next morning. I know some of you will sympathize with that. It's the lucky lady who has her own sewing room.
My husband came home from work one day and told me he had seen a 'for rent' sign in one of the little shops on the main street. (I think that was a hint.) We lived a few blocks from there so the next day I walked downtown and took a look in the picture window that took up nearly the whole front of the shop. It was a tiny bare little shop with a small glass-top display case and a bunch of dusty shelves in back. It would do.
I cleaned and scrubbed and polished until the place was spick and span and that window sparkled! An old family friend proudly presented me with a hand painted wooden sign to hang in the front window that said 'Marcia's Sewing'. His spelling of my name may have been a little off but his heart was in the right place.
I was delighted with having my very own business, a place of my own.
Right from the start I was busy with little jobs like taking in and shortening pants and altering hemlines but I still had a lot of spare time on my hands so I looked around to see if there was something more I could do. I thought making doll clothes would be a lot of fun and I could use up some of the fabrics I had been collecting for years. The Cabbage Patch dolls were at the height of their popularity just then so I picked up a few patterns (I still have them!) and got down to business.
That old family friend I mentioned before was kind enough to make me a pegboard to hang on the side wall of the shop. With a bunch of long peg hooks to hang things from it was soon filled with Cabbage Patch clothes that started selling immediately. To make a long story short, with a few small bank loans and a move to a bigger place, twenty-two years went by before I bought my own building.
During those years I taught myself minor doll repair and pattern making. It started out with people bringing in old dolls to dress for them and quickly morphed into 'can you clean her up a little'? and 'her hand is broken, any way you can fix that'? I bought doll repair books and booklets I found advertised in doll magazines. Parts were available from the same sources. Time marches on. Doll repair wasn't my favorite thing to do, but I absolutely loved creating those antique reproduction doll outfits. One of my favorite things to do was go to estate sales searching for vintage materials, trims and laces. Doll clothes don't need yards and yards of fabric so finding even small bits and pieces was a delight and very often priced low because estate sale folks just wanted rid of them. By then working with the dolls was my main business and the sewing and alterations was a side line being done by lovely lady who had joined me in the business.
I took advantage of a small business financial program being offered by the city and stocked my doll shop with a wonderland of popular dolls. It brought in a plethora of new customers plus the doll repair business reached huge proportions. One of my good customers was a young woman who lived about an hour away and was interested in learning to do the doll repair and eventually starting her own home business. She worked with me for about five years learning composition and antique doll repair. Her interests also included making and painting porcelain dolls which she still does at home. I was very happy to turn over the repair portion of the business to her in time. She ended up being so much better at it than I was and really loved it.
The thing about dressing antique dolls is they were mostly all different sizes and I could have spent a fortune buying reproduction patterns so I started making my own. That's when I found my niche in the doll world. Making the patterns was what I really loved to do. Twenty five years ago I made the decision to close down the store and turn to pattern making. By then the new larger fashion dolls were making their debut and they fascinated me.
Dolls like Gene and Tyler were just starting to look like the future of fashion dolls and I wanted in! The pattern market at that time was dominated by the same old companies we all knew, but their mindset was generic sloppy fit for as many dolls in the same height range as possible. The online groups I belonged to were unhappy with that.
In the late 90's I introduced 'Perfect Patterns'. Perfectly fitted patterns for each doll. No guess work, no struggling with patterns a little too big or too small. It's been going strong ever since. It's fun and I love doing it and look forward to new dolls in the future.
Originally this Etsy shop was started by my good friend BJ Cohen in 2009 and many of you have worked with her for several years. I regret to inform you that BJ is not doing too well these days and is spending some time recuperating in a nursing home. We all hope she will come home again soon. I hope I do as good a job with the shop as she did.
It's a long story, I used to make PDF versions of the patterns but due to the advent of Windows 10 I am no longer able to use the software programs so it's mail order only from now on.
