Lawn is another cotton favorite for doll dresses for dolls made before 1960, but even more appropriate for those made before 1950. Lawn is a lightweight cloth, crisper than voile but not as crisp as organdy. Lawn can range from gauzy or sheer to an almost opaque effect .. It is a great fabric for doll clothes! The prints are charming and it is fairly easy to find a print that is small enough in scale to work for even quite small dolls. (We will talk about pattern scale more in another post.) Lawn was especially popular for doll clothes in the 1920s and 1930s, and it was also known as “Nainsook” so if you see that in old catalog ads for dolls, you will know what kind of fabric the dress is! Lawn used to be made of linen but is now made mostly if not entirely of cotton.
Lawn makes lovely doll dresses, but again, the new lawn is usually not sized and needs to be sized to have a little crispness to it for the best effects. It is usually easy to sew, even for little dolls. Click here to see a dress of printed lawn. The blue dress shown with this post is also lawn, click here to see more.
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