This blue silk mantelet, sewn for my American Girl Felicity doll, is a rather special piece of clothing.
Some time ago, my mother-in-law gifted me an old silk blouse to use in my doll sewing projects. It was a blouse from the early 1990s, when shirts were cut generously, and had room for three sets of shoulder pads. The silk crepe fabric had a good deal of water-staining, but by doing the body of the mantelet in two halves, I was able to cut around the stains and had just enough fabric left over for the ruffle and the hood.
The mantelet is lined with a piece of gorgeously soft and slithery white silk jacquard left over from another blouse – one my own mother made more than 40 years ago. There was very little fabric left; only a ragged square piece marked with a faded gold makers label, but there was just enough –
I bound the neck of the mantelet with one more strip of the blue silk crepe – the last usable scrap.
Memories carry us to countries we haven’t been and people that we haven’t seen for a long time. Inside and out, the mantelet is soft and delicious to touch. When I made this, I didn’t sew for my dolls by hand and I didn’t know how a mantle should fit, but with my trusty Haunted Elna sewing machine and the aid of a low resolution digitized scan found on a google image search, I sewed up a little mantelet for a well-travelled doll. Now, when I touch the soft silk, I’m touching people who are thousands of miles away from where I am, people who shared small fabrics, and large loves, and doing so, helped me grow into the sewing that I do today.