Once I had sewn my American Girl Doll a green winter cape and a pair of high-fashion winter muffs, naturally I now needed a pair of silk mitts for my American Girl doll to match.
The mittsare sewn from the same white tissue taffeta as the muff casing, fused to a soft woven interfacing for stability during the embroidery process. (In retrospect, it would have been more sensible to have embroidered them on a hoop before I cut them out. Then I wouldn’t have had to stabilize anything. I blame midnight sewing choices for that)
To fasten the mitts to the dolls non-flexible arms, I settled on corded embroidery floss strung through a set of eyelets. Which meant I had to learn how to sew eyelets.
If you wish to try them for yourself, Burnley and Trowbridge has a good video tutorial here.
The technique isn’t complicated – using an awl you make a hole in the fabric, and then you whip stitches around the edges of the hole to hold it open. Lastly, you insert the awl again to press the hole wide enough for a cord to pass through.
I played with awls and embroidery floss until I had it figured enough to wing it. The first four eyelets on the left-handed mitt were reasonably scrappy, but at number 5 the technique fell into place and if the rest aren’t exactly exactly oil paintings, they are perfectly serviceable and respectable enough to hold up their heads in polite company and I am extremely proud of them!
I mean, from the underside it looks as if she’s wearing a silk ren-fair gauntlet, but for a first try on a doll whose fingers can’t be wiggled, this sort of result at this small scale is pretty okay in my book.
So we’ve got a gown, a cloak, a muff and silk mitts for an American Girl doll – we’ve got some perfection of Regency evening wear right here!
