Esme - A Lancashire Lass

 This is Esme, a Rhoda doll dressed in fabric from the Fairtrade fabric range.  Their fabric is great to work with and comes in checks, squares & stripes in lovely colours.  She has a vintage cotton broderie anglais underskirt.  As always she is 50cm tall with a hand dyed calico body and a hand embroidered face. Her hair is a new colour to me from the Clover Natural Woolroving Range and I love the brunette look it creates. I think she has a no nonsense gaze and would be someone you could really talk to who would listen, offering solid advice.

Whether its the pattern of the fabric or the combination of colours but she reminds me of old sepia photographs of young girls from the Lancashire mill towns in their Sunday best. When working these lasses always had long white pinnies and their sleeves rolled up, really down to business.  An elderly friend of my Grandma Ida and a regular visitor to our farm when I was a child used to proudly tell us she ran seven looms. Looking at photos, I was once romanticising about the long dresses they wore and she very quickly told me about walking to the mill on winter mornings through the snow.  Your dress dragging on the floor getting wetter and heavier and then having to work all day with damp skirts and underskirts chilling you to the bone. Not so romantic! So here is Esme in her Sunday best, I hope you like her.