I am interested in researching cloth dolls specifically and just wonder if anyone had any good suggestions on books that cover that topic.  Thanks!

The simplest cloth dolls are the ones we sell as kits or already completed on our website, raggedsoldier.com   The directions were found in _The American Girl’s Book_ (our copy was published in 1863 and has nothing to do with the modern American Girl series). 

In the same source are directions for a jointed cloth doll.  Unfortunately, there aren’t any directions for making clothing but I’m assuming you were just supposed to know.

Of the books mentioned, the easy-to-make Godey doll is a modern interpretation.  I haven’t made either the doll or the clothing so I can’t address how accurate the fit is, e.g., whether the bodices have dropped shoulders, although they did include instructions for making a corset.  If you made that doll, it would not look like any period doll I have seen.  And the context of outfitting a cloth doll with a corset and day dress doesn’t – at least to me – seem to fit.  It would seem a cloth doll would have a petticoat and work dress but that is just my opinion.

We don’t have a copy of the book on the Godey Lady Doll so I can only judge from the cover.  The image of the woman with the huge brimmed hat would make me wonder about how accurate the patterns would be.  Maybe someone who has seen that book’s contents can address the clothing patterns.

I don’t have the Gail’s Doll Patterns photocopy but, unless she obtained permission from the original creator, her photocopies are a violation of copyright since publications created after 1923 are not yet public domain.

We have a copy of the Amazon reprint of “How to Dress a Doll” which is directly from period sources (various Godey’s issues from 1860 and 1861).  That is one of the most accurate sources although the directions often assumed you knew how to do certain operations.

Other books include:

How to Dress an Old-Fashioned Doll - The book is a reprint of a 1908 book.  The dolls themselves and the fashions look very much 1880's at the earliest, at least to me.

Make Your Own Old-Fashioned Cloth Doll and Her Wardrobe – The doll itself looks most like the jointed cloth doll in _The American Girl’s Book_ although the legs don’t look like they are jointed.  Just the title implies that she wasn’t trying to make 1860's clothing and, when you look at the cloths, there are some obvious flaws.  For example, the drawers (which are called pantaloons) go all the way to the ankles.  From what I can tell, the shoulders aren’t dropped at all. 

Sewing Victorian Doll Clothes - Of course, the Victorian Period spanned more than 60 years so not all the dolls in this book are appropriate for the civil war period.  There are pictures of some gorgeous dolls and their clothing but all the dolls are china or other rigid material.  And although there are some patterns, in a quick skimming I couldn’t find a reference to the size of the doll, so adaptation might be necessary.

I’ll look through some of our other books and see what they have on cloth dolls.

And a cloth doll which we’d love to find period references is the topsy-turvy.  We have found many secondary sources that claim it was ante-bellum but no one can give us a primary source.  In fact, the stories about the dolls are contradictory, some claiming they were a slave girl’s doll and others claiming they were a white girl’s plaything.  The earliest example we have found was from around the 1890's.

Michael Mescher

I can't say I've seen a doll as described with just a cloth body and no legs (with the exception of our rolled fabric dolls which have no legs but stand up just fine on the flat end of the roll).  But one problem with cloth dolls is that they not only aren't as durable as dolls made of rigid materials but also they were probably played with more than china or other delicate dolls.  As a result, they became filthy and ragged, of value only to their owner who loved them.  When that person lost interest or the doll was put into storage to be found by descendents, it probably had a high likelihood of being tossed in the trash.

Such a doll could have existed during the civil war period but I wouldn't use a later example, albeit simple, as a justification for a civil war period doll.  But keep looking and maybe one will turn up from the 1860's or even earlier.

Michael Mescher