Clara's 1878 Winslow Homer Dress

Winslow Homer's 1878 watercolor Fresh Air
(source: Wikimedia Commons. Image in the public domain)

Clara’s dress for today is based on a Winslow Homer watercolor named Fresh Air. The painting features a romanticized shepherdess standing with a few sheep in a field. I thought this was a fun painting that would make a great paper doll dress for Clara.

The girl is wearing is a simple drapy blouse over a ruffled skirt. The shoes have low heels, and some decorated buckles and pointed toes. The final part of the outfit is a straw hat with some long ribbons.

To print Clara's dress, use this PDF file:

Clara's Dress 81 (619k)

Clara is a free, printable paper doll. Clara will be available on this blog as long as I continue to post new fashion pages for her. You can read the introduction for the Clara paper doll here.

To print the Clara paper doll, use this PDF file:

 The Clara Paper Doll (718k)

Hollyhocks for Mother's Day

I was driving home from a grocery store a few days ago, and saw a huge row of beautiful pink hollyhocks in front of someone's house. (Did you know that Hollyhocks can grow in Arizona? I think my parents grew some after I went away to college.) But every time I see hollyhocks, they remind me of my mother. Why is that?

When I was very young, my mother got a print of John Hafen's "Girl Among the Hollyhocks" (painted in 1902). The painting hung on the wall above the piano in our front room for many years. I recall that my mother loved the painting very much. Why is this painting important to me? Because it was important to my mother, and it reminds me of her.

The painting probably reminds my mom of her own mother's garden, which was filled with beautiful plants and flowers. My grandmother was a very wonderful person, and certain flowers remind me of her. For instance, some dahlias (picture on the right) in San Francisco reminded me of my grandmother and the beautiful dahlias that she always grew on the side of her house. Sometimes when we visited, we could cut one or two dahlias for the dinner table.

Now, what does all this have to do with paper dolls? I guess I saw the hollyhocks, and remembered my mother, and the painting, and decided it might work for a paper doll.

Well, back to the painting. Do you see that little girl in the painting? She is wearing a white dress that is a classic turn-of-the-century fashion design. It has a rounded yoke with a ruffle, poofy sleeves, also with a drapy ruffle, and some more ruffles around the calf-length hem. Lace and ribbon would trim the dress. The black stockings and ankle boots are also a classic style, seen in many school pictures from the early 1900s.

Tuesday's paper doll will be my best guess at what the original model was wearing. I have referenced enough period dresses to be confident that the fashion page will be historically representative, if not completely accurate.

Now, I want to know: does a specific flower remind you of someone? Are there any flowers in your history or heritage?