The doll that inspired an entire Jane Austen wardrobe collection made by Jeanne Vaver during the Pandemic

Serena, the author’s first doll who inspired her to dolls and doll clothing.

How my “Inspired by Jane” Project Began 

In the very early months of Covid in 2020, everything shut down.  There were no places to go because almost nothing was open. However, being stuck in the house presented plenty of options for keeping busy, including going to the storage room for a big job of sorting and discarding or saving forgotten treasures.  On a bottom shelf I found a big box that held the handmade dolls I had made in the past.  As soon as I took out this particular doll, previously dressed as “Little Bo Peep”, I was reminded of Jane Austen. 

She wasn’t particularly pretty, her nose was hardly there, but she looked intelligent, and she had fuzzy brown hair arranged in a bun at the nape of her neck.  She was wearing little black slippers like the tiny feet depicted in Regency fashion plates.  I immediately knew that she needed a dress to make her into Jane Austen.     

This first idea turned into a perfect project for me because it allowed me to play with a doll, sew doll clothes, and would require researching, a task that always energizes me. 

Dolls

 The first doll I remember was the doll my mother made for me in 1945, for my fourth birthday.  I named her Serena and she has always been with me. She made me into a “doll person”.  A few years on I would get one new doll a year, always from Santa, until I was 10 years old. I had learned how to be a mother to my dolls from the Raggedy Ann books by Johnnie Gruelle, where Marcella, the mistress of so many dolls, was always washing their clothes and hanging them out to dry., but none of my dolls ever had an extra dress or a nightgown.  In second grade I was friends with Esther Ann, only because if I were invited to play at her house after school her mother would give us pieces of fabric to sew a doll dress.  Neither of us got any further than cutting out a square, threading a needle (challenge!) and learning to take a few running stitches to hold two pieces together, and then inevitably it was time to walk home before it got dark.  But “dolls” and “sewing” were planted in my brain. 

Sewing 

Now I’ll tell you how I learned to sew.   I grew up In a rural town in Iowa (one flashing stop light).  There were 29 in my grade. Most of us started together in kindergarten and ended together as high school graduates in just this one school building.  As Freshmen in High School every girl automatically was registered for Home Economics I; there was no other choice.  Mrs. Cling was the teacher, with a REPUTATION handed down from all the girls in grades that came before ours.   In sixth grade we were figuring out if Mrs. Cling would be retired by the time we were in high school.  No such luck even though we thought she was an “old lady”.    First semester was sewing, and we had to learn the 200 parts of the electric sewing machine before we could sit down in front of one.  We were challenged to make a sampler of five different kinds of buttonholes, stitched by hand with red thread on yellow fabric and every buttonhole had to be lined up perfectly.  For our first garment, a skirt, we “applied” a zipper over and over again before we could proceed to the waistband.  In the hem, any stitches not small enough or too small as well as any deviation more than 1/4 of an inch in the depth of the hem meant that the whole hem was ripped out and done over.  Hems, of course, were done by hand and the gathered skirts in fashion were almost two yards around.   We moaned and groaned mightily, but now I wish with all my heart that I could tell Mrs. Cling that learning to sew was one of the two most important things I learned in high school, and is a skill that I have carried with me all these years.  (The other class was typing.)  “Thank-you” is not a big enough word for what she gave me.  I’ve been sewing for 70 years. 

Research 

A third big interest of mine has always been wanting to know more about the fashion for women in different historical time periods.  My husband enjoys vintage movies but I have a hard time watching with him because the “historical costumes” worn by the female characters were so obviously influenced by the current fashions in the 1940s and 50s, such as skirt lengths and hair styles when the films were made. It’s so distracting.  How could the costume designers not know what I know about what the ladies should be wearing! 

In 1986 Pleasant Company began The American Girl Doll collection, with dolls dressed in historically correct clothes for each girl’s specific time period in United States history.   I was thrilled when the books and the dolls became available.  My husband presented me with Molly, because she is 10 years old in 1944, my own time frame for being a child, When I retired from teaching my mother gifted me Addy (1864). I started to play with dolls again!   I had a reason to sew all the doll clothes that I never had for my childhood dolls, growing up. 

Later on, after moving from the city to farm country, I discovered that I could enter all the categories in the Doll Division in the Crafts building at the Sandwich Fair (sandwichfair.com/history) for just one entry fee,  AND collect premium prize money for every 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place ribbon awarded.  I did this for five years, very successfully.  I was playing with dolls, sewing, and using my accumulated knowledge of fashion in history for a purpose.   

So that’s how three interests came together again, unexpectedly, for this “Inspired by Jane Austen” collection.  I did not know that it would last three years when I finally considered Jane’s wardrobe as “enough already”. 

Here’s a peek at the doll, in her shift, pantaloons, stockings and shoes.  In the coming weeks I’ll be writing and posting photos about her dresses, accessories, hats, AND more underclothes, because ladies wore a lot of layers beneath their dresses!

Thanks for coming this far with me, in the celebration of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday!

Jeanne Vaver

March 25, 2025