Happy June! By the way, Friday, the 13th, is… National Sewing Machine Day! In honor, here are directions for making one of Mom’s beloved rag dolls.
RAG DOLL By Gloria Pitzer*
FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
No Laughing Matter [Gloria Pitzer’s syndicated column (circa early 1980s)]
Excerpt from… ‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE THANKFUL AND/OR JOLLY
[RE: The Rag Doll]
BEING PRODUCTS OF THE [Great] Depression of the 1930s, Paul and I remember how to make more from less, during those times. It was always sufficient. And we always looked toward the day when there might be “more”, making it a goal that enabled us to take on many an undesirable job for meager pay, just to keep going.
Our married daughter [Debbie] still has the rag doll I made her one of those Christmas holidays, designing it from one of my old skirts and blouses, stuffing it with old nylons.
I had forgotten all about it, until I saw the pathetic little thing sitting on her dresser, one day, and said it looked familiar. She keeps it, she confessed, to remind her of how much she has now and how far we have come, by working hard and caring!
[*NOTE: The directions (described below) were never publicly printed before. As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share this.]
Mom made each of us girls one of these rag dolls [similar in looks to the coloring page illustration (above)] for Christmas one year. It was always one of my most favorite gifts – the one I remember most. I wish I still had mine. I can’t even find a picture of it anywhere.
INGREDIENTS/ITEM NEEDS:
Mom used various material and yarn scraps, as well as old nylons.
INSTRUCTIONS:
She designed their hair out of yarn, wrapping it around one of her large cardboard quilting-square-forms and then hand-sewing the bunched yarn onto their heads to represent our own hair colors and styles. The heads were fashioned, like small round pillows, from material scraps of old pillow cases that were stuffed with old nylons.
The faces were sewn in with yarn scraps to create the eyes, noses, and mouths. The bodies were fashioned, like small rectangular pillows, from the material scraps (also stuffed with old nylons). The arms and legs were fashioned similarly (in tubular shapes) and then all the pieces were sewn onto the rectangular body pillow [as illustrated (above)].
Mom crocheted the little booties that she put on the dolls’ “feet”, like the bootie tree ornaments she made for our Christmas tree. [See instructions at… https://therecipedetective.com/2024/12/01/christmas-tree-boot-ornament/ .] She also fashioned pretty little dresses for them out of scraps of her old blouses and added belts made out of braided yarn.
LAST THOUGHTS…
For questions or comments, you can email me at therecipedetective@outlook.com. I’m also on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective.
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