When you sew in miniature, you have to pay a lot more attention to things like drape. What's drape? Fancy word for how stiff something is and how gravity affects how it DRAPES over the body.
If you've read my blog post about polyester vs silk ribbon, you are probably already aware of this. Polyester and other synthetic fabrics are very useful, but a quality that most of them have is that they're stiffer than natural fibers like cotton, silk at the same fiber size/weave.
Here's an example of a dress I made with accents added in vintage lace. Two rows of lace down at the hem and lot of ruffles? Look how it ruffles with the fabric and doesn't spread out the edge!
That simple thing you take for granted in human sized sewing is SO hard to achieve in doll size.
Like silk ribbon, you can still find non-synthetic or synthetic blended lace, but it's a lot harder to find and finding fine lace in good doll size is already EXTREMELY hard!
But we must.
Ok guys, here's where my blog post about doll hunting is also really helpful! Most of the places I'll find old toys at, I'll find old lace at. Estate/Yard sales, flea markets, antique stores.
Mini history lesson: Back before synthetic lace where designs could be stamped vs woven, lace was very expensive. VERY EXPENSIVE. A tea gown covered in lace could be more of a show of wealth than a ballgown. When lace ruffles under sleeves were in fashion, the cuffs were removable because then you only needed 1 pair you could wear with all your dresses. Extra bits of lace, even a couple of inches long, were saved in sewing stashes. Lace would be cut off old dresses to save when the rest was turned into rags or quilts.
So when you come across an old sewing stash, you're probably going to find short pieces of lace that aren't really useful for most human clothes but you can totally use on doll stuff.
This is great! It's such a niche use, the short bits of a yard or less are often very cheap. How cheap?
Yes, that says 1.00 ea
Vintage lace takes a little more work to find (but honestly not that much since if I want to find good doll scale lace I have to do a road trip to NYC's fashion district) but here's what a single antique show netted me:
I would say "JACKPOT!" but that's not an unusual haul. People that specialize in vintage clothing or linens/quilts will usually have a bin of lace scraps somewhere. Most of it is 1" or narrower, which is not really fashionable in trim sizes currently (but used to be in vintage/antique styles) and it's all non-synthetic.
BUT. BUT.
Almost all of it is mellowed/mildewed with age. Some of it has spots. Most of it has turned some shade of brown/yellow.
Sure, you could match your fabric to your lace for the more evenly colored stuff, but that's really hard. If I want something to look aged, I tea dye it. I don't want it to actually be mildewed, even if I killed all the mildew with a vinegar bath. I don't want anything mildewed anywhere near the rest of my fabric stash, so I keep this stuff double bagged in my laundry room until I clean it up.
Cleaning it up is the most time intensive part. Going to a flea market takes less time than going to NYC, is cheaper in transportation AND in trim stores, but cleaning up lace is what makes the two things approximately equal in trouble.
Here's what you need:
Pot of water, oxi clean/oxygen bleach. There are other methods (search on internet for 'cleaning/restoring mildewed fabric'), but this one is the one I like best because it has no chemical stink. Straight up bleach, for example, is going to damage your fibers more.
Follow the instructions on the back of your oxygen bleach product. You don't need to get your water to a boil, just hot.
Each batch doesn't take very long (15-30 mins), but if you're doing a lot of lace it can take all day, or even a couple of days since you usually have to wait for the lace to air dry on a rack before you iron it and roll it up or card it to go into your stash.
Ironing also takes a long time and is annoying.
If the before/after pics don't seem all that extreme to you, here's a pic of the pot after just that bit of lace and all the gunk left behind:
Seriously, y'all: EWW!
I have the NYC option--most of you reading this won't--and I still prefer the flea market option. Not just for cost, but because I will only find 3-4 laces that work well in doll scale in NYC (go look at the article to see how MANY trims there are there, but still only a very tiny % of them that work in doll scale).
Remember, if you're working with a natural fiber lace it's also very easy to dye, so if you want a color like red or black that you can't find, it's just another pot of hot water away!
I hope you all got some useful info out of this blog post and can now go make your doll clothes just a little bit nicer :)