for a 13 to 14-inch Doll The greatest difficulty is making the designs small enough to fit on the doll. To plan the pieced strips I cut construction paper strips the size needed without seam allowances and taped them together to make the design. This helped me decide the size of the design and how it would look on the doll. I found that strips and blocks for pieced designs should be at least ⅜" wide so seam allowances would not be caught under a second seam making the strip very heavy. Once the design was planned, I added ¼" seam allowances and any offset required. [Fig. 3-5] If you use my designs you can omit the construction paper planning. The full skirt can be as much as 25-inches around. The skirt will be too heavy to fall gracefully if it is much fuller. The total skirt made up is about 8-inches long. Bands that form the skirt can be different widths from vary narrow to much wider. Make the bottom band one inch longer than the length of the skirt planned to turn up on the inside for a hem. According to the article in DOLL NEWS, traditional Seminole skirts had a ruffle, depending on the era, somewhere between the knee and the hip. The doll skirts have ruffles 4 to 4-¾-inches from the bottom of the skirt. Make the ruffle from a strip of fabric 1 ½ to 2 times the fullness of the skirt and 1 ⅛-inches long. Narrow hem the bottom edge. Run two rows of gathering stitches through the top ¼-inch seam allowance. In order to make the skirt less bulky at the top where it fits into the doll's waistline, the fullness of the skirt is reduced by gathering the band below the ruffle and the ruffle to fit a band above the ruffle that is four to six-inches less full than the bands below it. Reduce the fullness of the skirt again 1 or 2-inches below the waistline by gathering the lower band into a shorter upper band. [Fig. 6] Fig. 3. The pieced bands are planned using construction paper, then executed in fabric with the addition of ¼-inch seam allowances. Top shows the band inspired by the picture in the Doll NEwS article. It is planned with three ½" strips sewn together then cut into ½-inch blocks which are put together at a 45-degree angle. In the center is the actual fabric strips cut with ¼-inch seam allowances and ½-inch offsets at the top and bottom to allow for the 45-degree angle. At the bottom is the paper planning strip for the checkerboard band near the top of the skirt in Fig. 1. Fig. 4. The planning for the pieced bands on the skirt in Fig. 2 is more complicated. The top strip that forms the top pieced band on the skirt is of my own design. The top and bottom strips are ¾-inches wide with two center ⅜-inch stripes all sewn together to form one strip. From left to right, the construction paper planning strip is taped together. Next it is cut apart and the blocks are taped together with a ½-inch offset. Below the strip is the final plan with a ¾-inch offset. See how the ⅜-inch offset changes the look. To the right of the planning strip is the actual fabric strip with ¼-inch seam allowances cut apart and put together at a 45-degree angle ready to be set between other bands to form the skirt. DOLL neWS * ufDc.Org 113http://www.ufDc.Org