Paper Dolls And How To Make Them

Paper Dolls, and How to Make Them 

author unknown, published in 1857 by Anson Davies Fitz

My Dear Young Friends:

       I have often pitied myself, because there were no paper dolls when I was a little girl. I supposed that all little girls, now-a-days, played with them, until a few days ago, when a lady told me that she knew a number, who had never heard of paper dolls, and then she said: "Why can't you make a little book, and tell how to make them?"  And Mary looked up and said; "Please, do, Mamma, it would make a great many children happy." So, as I am kept in my room, not able to do much else, I will try to teach you how to enjoy this delightful amusement.

       All that I knew about Paper Dolls when I was a little girl was, that sometimes a kind friend would cut from a long, narrow strip of paper, (usually the edge of a newspaper) folded a great many times, so that all could be cut at once, a row of little men and women, like this:

Even these poor little things were very amusing.

       Eight or nine years ago, I first saw a genuine modern Paper Doll. It was cut out of Bristol board, and painted to represent a little girl, very fat, with a very small waist, and a very high forehead, and red cheeks, and a great quantity of curls. It had three dresses, one pink, one blue, and one yellow, of different fashions, and a hat trimmed with flowers and ribbons. The dresses and the hat were also made of paper, painted very nicely, and could be taken off and put on again. My little girl had never before had any toy, which gave her so much delight. This was the beginning, in our family, of the reign of paper dolls, which has lasted, without interruption, to the present day.

       There are now a great many Paper Dolls in the country. I have seen many, made by the same person, who made the one that I have described. She is a little girl in Boston, who, I have heard, is paying for her education, by the money which she receives from the sale of them. They have been sold, for many years, at the book store of Munroe & Francis, in Boston where, I presume, they are still to be found. From different parts of New England, and even from New York, little girls have sent to this store for a lady, or a girl, or a boy, or a family, and have been delighted at receiving, in exchange for their shilling, or quarter or half dollar, an envelope, containing the doll and it's pretty wardrobe, larger or smaller, with more or fewer dresses, according to its price.

      Then, of late years, there have been Jenny Linds, and other famous ladies, with their elegant wardrobes. Fanny Gray too, with her history, and dresses to match, is a beautiful toy.

       These are engraved and richly colored, and made to stand upon a wooden pedestal, by fitting into a groove. They are intended to be admired and respected, but are quite too stately to be treated with familiarity. They can not be taken to the heart, and petted, like our paper dolls. Yet for those, who do not enjoy the simpler and more varried pleasure of making them for themselves, these are very delightful.

       There is also a less expensive kind of ready made dolls, printed, and sometimes colored, a dozen or more upon the same sheet of paper, with a dress and hat to fit each one, upon another sheet. The dolls and dresses have only to be cut out, and put together, and then they can go a-visiting, or do any thing which other dolls can do. But they are not what I mean by paper dolls.

       What I mean by paper dolls are little homemade figures of boys, girls, ladies, babies, any bodies, drawn on paper, and cut out, and dressed in paper clothes. These dolls and dresses may be drawn or painted, they may be well made or badly made, they may look like elegant ladies, and dear little babies, or they may be cross-eyed, and their foreheads may be larger than all the rest of their faces, and their heads may grow out of their shoulders, and their fat arms may stand out straight, and end in little knobs it is all the same, they are, little darlings,  perfect beauties, the sweetest little things that ever were seen, and nothing in the way of paper is too good to cut up and make their dresses.

       Indeed, I have sometimes thought that the more out of proportion a paper doll was, the better it was liked. I have tried to improve some, made by my little friends, by cutting down a monstrous neck or arm, but the change has not pleased them; it made the doll less like the pattern‚ which Sarah or Anna had given them. I do not think that they learn in this way to admire deformity, for they certainly would not like to see a human being shaped like their little pets. The fact only shows how much their imaginations can supply.

       And this is one of the charms of paper doll playing. Out of an old card, and a few bits of colored paper, with the aid of a pencil and a pair of scissors, a child can create for herself a world of enjoyment. Babies to be nursed and cuddled, little girls and boys to be taught and entertained, rewarded and punished, mammas to keep house, and go visiting, and take care of the little ones, with an endless variety of dresses suited to all occasions, are fashioned by their little fingers, with as much delight as they receive from the most expensive doll, which has come all the way from London or Paris. I have often been surprised at the ingenuity and taste which children have shown, in designing the different articles of dress, out of almost nothing. Little bits of paper which would else have been thrown away as useless, acquire a new value. "What a beautiful basque this will make for my little Lilly! Here's a piece of gold paper perhaps it is half an inch long by an eighth of an inch wide; it will make some buttons and a buckle for little Freddy's jacket." Even the stray feather escaped from a pillow, a nuisance to all other eyes, is seized upon as a treasure, and converted into a graceful ornament, as all must allow, to "little Willy's cap.

        But I suppose that you want to see one of these wonderful paper dolls, if you are so unfortunate as never to have had that pleasure. So I must make haste and tell you how to make them.

       What are they made of?

       Any kind of stiff paper, the backs of old cards, paste-board, Bristol board; the finer and smoother and cleaner it is, so much the better. A glazed, shiny‚surface will not answer, for you can not draw the face well upon it.

       For the dresses, I dare say that your father will give you the colored covers of old pamphlets. The unprinted backs of these are better than the glazed colored papers which you find at the book-stores, because you can paint upon them, and thus shade and trim them as you please. The folds are made by painting  with a darker shade of the same color. Some of the prettiest dresses which I have seen, have been made of white paper, painted, but it requires more labor and skill to make them well in this way, than of paper already colored. There is scarcely any kind of paper, even brown wrapping-paper, out of which you can not make something pretty for your little ladies and gentlemen. Colored note-paper or letter-paper is perhaps the most desirable material. The colored tissue motto-papers make elegant dresses for parties, if you allow your little people to go to such places. Of plain white paper you can, with the help of a pencil, make beautiful embroidered jackets, and aprons and baby dresses.

       These are the materials. Now we are ready to begin.

       You will need a pattern to guide you in your first attempts. You will find several at the end of the book. Take a piece of thin paper, and lay it over one of these, and trace it. Out out the figure that you have drawn, and you will thus have a pattern, which you can lay upon stiff paper, and draw its outline by passing your pencil around its edge. Out out this stiff one for your first paper doll, and I wish you much joy in playing with it.

       Next draw the hair and features as well as you can. Try to make the eyebrows alike, and the eyes of the same size, and looking the same way, and the nose in the middle, and do not let the mouth stretch quite from one ear to the other. The curls, I dare say, will have rather a singular appearance; but never mind, you'll do better by and by. It would be well to practice making faces upon your slate. I presume that almost every child has some older friend, who will be very glad to assist her in both drawing and painting the faces of her dolls.

       If, after your first doll is finished, you should say, "What a horrid-looking thing!" which I do not believe you will say, do not destroy it, but make a dress for it, and give it to your little sister, and she, I am sure, will be delighted, and call it "pooty baby." Then try again, and make another, and if this second one does not look as well as you hoped it would, still I think that you had best make a dress or two for it; for after all, the great charm of playing paper dolls is in dressing them. If you can not succeed in making respectable-looking faces, you can perhaps find in some fashion-plate at the end of an old magazine, a suitable head, which your mother will allow you to cut off, and paste upon a body of your own making, for these fashionable things have no real bodies; their dress is the whole of them.

       For such, and many other purposes, you will find a bottle of gum Arabic very useful. Two or three pennies worth of gum, dissolved in water, will last you a long time. There are bottles which come on purpose, with wide mouths, and a camel's hair brush fastened into the cork. With a bottle of gum Arabic, you are prepared to do great things in the millinery and dressmaking line.

       In order to help you a little, I will draw some dolls for you. On Plate I. are a boy and girl. You have only to cut them out, and they are ready to be dressed. As I said before, playing with paper dolls consists more in dressing them than in making them. It is the dressing them which makes all the difference between paper pictures and paper dolls. Even those, who can make them for themselves, are much pleased to have new patterns made for them. So I will proceed at once to the dressing, for I am in a great hurry to have you begin. 

Left, On Plate I. are a boy and girl. Right, the dresses drawn for antique paper dolls. In 1857, little boys often wore dresses until they turned four years old, during the Civil Ware through the Victorian era. This was done for the purposes of toilet training. The doll on the left is actually a little boy. The doll on the right is a girl. Read more about breeching here.

       Now the great invention, from which paper doll playing may be said to have its beginning, consists simply in making the dresses doubled at the top, so that they may stay on. I consider this one of the greatest discoveries of modern times. As soon as paper frocks could be kept on paper shoulders, you may be sure that there were plenty of little fingers ready to put them on. The way is simply this; to fold the paper of which the dress is to be made, having the fold at the top, so that the dress is cut double, front and back, and the folded part makes a shoulder-strap. You will understand this by looking at the print. (Plate III. Fig. 2.) In order to make the dress fit the doll, you must lay the doll upon the folded paper, and mark the paper so that it will fit at the neck and the belt, and, as far as possible, draw the outline of the sleeves, waist and skirt, according to your fancy. Then remove the doll, and finish the outline and cut it out. Plate III. Figs. 1 and 2, will make this plain.

       Be careful and do not cut the shoulder-straps so narrow, that they will be torn open the first time that the dress is put on. And yet the space must not be too wide, or it will look very awkward. If your paper is scant, it is not necessary that the back should be the whole length of the front, for only the front is painted and ornamented and expected to be looked at.

       Now that you have learned this great secret, the way is clear before you. You can make dresses to your hearts' content, long waists, short waists, long skirts, short skirts, long sleeves, short sleeves, flounces and furbelows.

       You have as yet learned to make only low-necked dresses, which can be slipped on over the head. But certainly the little ladies will need some high-necked dresses for winter. I am sure that you would not send your doll to school with nothing on her neck. Yet you can not expect her head, if it is paper, to go through a hole, which is only big enough for her neck. So what can you do?

       Make the neck of the dress to fit the doll's throat, and then cut a slit down the back; or, what is still better, cut the back like Fig. 2. Plate IV.

       Jackets, aprons, cloaks, mantillas are all fastened on in the same way. Collars and belts can be neatly fitted, by making them long enough to fold over on the back, as represented in Plate II. Figs. 1 and 2.

       Bonnets and caps are made of two parts, the back and front, cut in the same shape, and gummed at the edges, leaving barely room for the head to slip in.

       It is a good plan to keep each doll, with its wardrobe, in an envelope by itself. My little girls name their dolls, and write their names and ages upon their backs, and upon the backs of their clothes. You will see how useful this would be, in case one of the little ones, who can not talk, should get lost.

Plate 3, drawn in 1857, the clothes were
painted with watercolors.

      I have given you directions for only the simplest and easiest way of making dresses. You will soon learn to vary from them in some respects. In Plate V. you will see that the cloak can not be doubled at the top. The edges of the front and back are gummed together at the sides leaving a space large enough for the head and shoulders to slip through.

       In Plate VIII. Fig. 2. the white neck-kerchief which is gummed to the dress, is folded behind, leaving an opening for the head.

       In cases where one or both arms fall within the dress, like Plate III. Fig. 1, you can either cut out the lower part of the arm, so that the dress will fit beneath it, or draw and paint a false arm, as in the baby's dress (Plate VI.) or cut one from cardboard and gum it to the sleeve.

       In the sack Fig. 3, Plate III., cut a slit at the bottom of the sleeve, and slip the arm through it.

      Collars, cuffs, belts, buttons, trimmings, under sleeves, pantalettes, even legs with shoes and stockings, can be cut out and gummed to the dresses, or, when the dress is painted upon white paper, the white articles can be left unpainted, and shaded and ornamented at pleasure.

       I think that you now know enough to be left to yourselves. You will find patterns of various articles of dress for boys, and girls, and ladies, and babies, at the end of the book. These are not to be cut out, but to be copied. There is no end to the pretty things that you can make. You will, soon collect, in one way or another, the simple materials which you can convert into beautiful dresses. I am sure that you and your mothers will all agree with me in saying that playing with paper dolls is the most delightful, the most varied, and at the same time the most simple and the least expensive of all your amusements.

Note. These small volume was published in New York in 1857 by an anonymous lady. It is believed to be the oldest copy about the topic ever published in the United States! The images here have been cleaned. There are a few additional examples in the original volume that I have yet to alter and post.