Spring Edwardian Wardrobe

Z here (yes, I am the spoiled one these days).  It's almost spring around here, and we're showing off the Edwardian wardrobe the human made last summer from JenWrenne's summer sew-a-long patterns.  She ended up resizing the original patterns for AGAT dolls for us instead.

First is Nellie's garden party dress, with embroidered inserts in the bodice and skirt.  The human happened to have a yard of embroidered eyelet scallop edging and a matching yard of embroidered eyelet insert that went perfectly with a piece of mint broadcloth.

Next is Lily in the rainy day dress made from a light blue calico with tiny white flowers.  The contrast is from white cotton, and the belt is from a piece of white bias tape.  This dress also ended up a little loose, but that means the blousing over the belt looks good.  (We think the human forgot to account for the extra fabric in pleats on the bodice in some way...)

Samantha is wearing a sailor dress made from this light blue linen with white stripes (please ignore the furry interloper).  It looks nice and summery, doesn't it?  The collar and cuffs are from white cotton.  Because it's linen, the pleats stay in well.  Sadly, so do any creases.  So this dress is usually hung up in the closet and not worn...

Finally, I'm wearing the pleated walking dress, which has a jacket and a skirt.  The outfit is made from a black cambric, with white contrast cuffs on the jacket.  The collar of the jacket didn't lie quite flat enough, so the human had to tack it down with an extra tuck.  The jacket yoke should probably be re-drafted if the human decides to make this dress again.

Louisa May Alcott Books

We've had a copy of "Little Women" since about when the human started making books for us, but at some point, we wanted the rest of the books in the series.

And so the human found a site with some wonderful covers and spine art for almost all of the books Louisa May Alcott wrote, and made us a set.

The collection includes "Little Women", "Little Men", "Jo's Boys", "An Old Fashioned Girl" (like so many of us these days), "Eight Cousins", and "Rose in Bloom".

This collection is for sale at the human's Etsy shop: Little Women book collection

The Original American Girl Books

The human is away for an entire week next week with no access to the english portions of the internet because she's off visiting her grandparents in China.  Z is going with her (and taking so many clothes to show off), but the rest of us are hanging out here, enjoying some more of our library.

As always, the human is really good at making stuff, and less good at remembering to show them off.  These were made ages ago.

What are they?  A complete set of the original white hardcover Historical American Girl books for Kirsten, Molly, Samantha, Felicity, and Addy.

Including the correct symbols on the spines

Which character is/was your favorite?

1940s Textbook Collection: Math, Science, and Health

On to the last installment of the textbooks of the 1940s.

Something that used to be common in school curricula was 'health and safety'.  There's a ton of these health-and-safety readers dating to the 1920s/1930s and through about the 1950s or so.  This selection was published by the state of California in 1940.

Highlights include 'how to avoid injury on the playground', 'the history of bathing', and 'how boys and girls grow'. 

These science books were the last three books of a larger set from 1st-6th grade.  These are the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade books.  Science books for earlier grades focused on observing nature, categorizing objects, and the basics of how to study how the physical world works.

The later grades start focusing on details.  Part of that whole 'learn to read' vs 'read to learn' that happens around 3rd/4th grade.

The upper elementary books start going into ecology, and the basics of physics and chemistry.

Finally, one of those things that you don't get so often with doll accessories:  math books.  And for dolls that are supposed to be in 3rd/4th grade, advanced math books.  Because some girls get to skip grade levels in math, and that is a good thing that should be encouraged.

There's a lot more of a focus on mental math and word problems and far far less on 'how did you get this answer'.  The human has some concerns about modern elementary school math education (deriving answers is all well and good, but basic arithmetic is really just rote memorization.  And if you don't have it memorized, advanced stuff is going to be a pain.)

So that's it for the 1940s textbooks.  Coming soon:  the 1930s Alice-and-Jerry readers, a precursor to the Dick-and-Jane books.

1940s Textbook Collection: English and Social Studies

There were way too many books to show off in one post, so it's been split up over several.  This time, the english and social studies books.  The ones we have are slightly smaller than the textbook from Molly's collection, and from the the same series.

There are workbooks that come with the actual textbooks, but the human decided not to make any.  These are definitely different from modern textbooks, as there are sections on 'how to correctly pronounce words'.

On to social studies:  these were fun because these are actually the 3rd, 4th, and 6th grade textbooks, because the 5th grade textbook was all about American history...and the site with the textbook scans was Canadian.

The human actually enjoyed reading the snippets on different cultures in these books.  It's a nice little window on how Americans viewed other cultures (or were taught how to view other cultures) half a century ago.

Coming up next post:  the math, science, and health books.

1940s Textbook Collection

It's still winter.  The humans are up in VT (and finally found the burst pipes from the cold snap in late December...) and we're going through the massive stashes of vintage textbooks that we have somehow acquired.

This time it's an entire curriculum's worth of textbooks from the 1940s.  Also perfect for our eventual time-traveling classroom in the old schoolhouse, but that has to wait for the pipes to be fixed and the drywall and the dollhouse to be built.  So that might take a while.  But we hope to have the time-traveling classroom done by fall.

This set has english, science, social studies, health, and math books for grades 4-6.  The english books is the exact one found in the now-retired 'Molly's School Supplies' accessory set.  As always, the human complained about a lack of math and science books for dolls, and went about fixing it in her own way.

A 4th grade textbook collection

This set of 5 textbooks would probably be what Molly or Nanea would have used.  The english book was actually published in 1947, but since the Pleasant Company accessory set had it, the human decided to include it.  The rest of the books were published in the 1940-1943 timeframe, making them period appropriate for World War 2 era dolls in North America.  (Fun fact, these books were actually found on a Canadian site because they were used in the Alberta school system, despite all being published in the US.)

Interiors, in color

The insides are scans of the real textboooks, shrunk down to doll-size.  The human tried making them as readable as possible while still being actually doll-sized.

This textbook collection can be purchased on the etsy store here.

Newbery Book Reviews: Little House on the Prarie

Nora here.  We're fairly certain that this set of books really needs no introduction as they seem to have been required reading for any history-loving female between the ages of 8 and 12 for at least 5 decades, and closer to 8.  However, it still took us quite some time to convince the human to make us a set for ourselves.

There's many editions, but we decided to go with the 1950s reprints with the Garth Williams illustrations as opposed to the original 1930s books.  The one book that is missing is 'The First Four Years', which is more of an add-on than part of the core series written by Laura Ingalls Wilder (and ghost-written by Rose Wilder Lane).  Perhaps our next book should be a doll edition of 'Pioneer Girl'.

Alas, the human couldn't find the full dust jacket illustrations, so we're stuck with simple hardcovers.

But the books all have the correct illustrations next to the correct text.  The human found the illustrations by searching auction sites, and then finding the right ones.  There was a stack of human-sized Little House books that she was comparing ours to while she was making them.

And the bonus book this week:

Little House in the Big Woods

Instructions