1930s Blue Flower Patterned Dress with Lace Scarf and Cherry Brooch

A 1930s-style blue dress with a small pattern of white flowers and green leaves. The neckline is decorated with a white lace scarf pinned with a plastic brooch in the shape of a yellow bow over a pair of red cherries. The scarf falls in a lace-edged ruffle down the front of the dress. The sleeves are slightly puffed, and there are rows of pintucks down the front of the bodice to each side of the ruffle. It's belted at the waist with the same kind of fabric. The skirt is just past knee length and is slightly flared at the base.
I’m breaking my paper doll slump with this 1930s-style dress! If you don’t follow me on Pinterest, you probably should, or at least you should select a couple of my boards to follow because I actually have nearly 200 boards. (I suggest Jewelry, Gorgeous Dresses and, of course, Liana’s Paper Dolls.) You may be asking, what does one person need with nearly 200 boards? The answer is, I have one board for fashion plates, illustrations and actual examples of clothes from almost every year between 1788 and 1965. Even if you aren’t foolhardy enough to hit that “Follow All” button, it’s fun to go to my profile and just scroll down, watching the fashions change. Whenever I want to draw a historical outfit, I’m always scrambling through Google Image Search, museum sites and so on for examples of outfits from that time, so having these boards is a great resource for me! I particularly like 1930s clothes, so I did a 1930s dress today. It’s mostly based on late 1930s styles (I think mostly 1937), but the pattern and decorations are my own invention.

In other news, I now have PDF collections of my 2014 dolls and outfits to download! So if you want to print them out, you don’t have to fuss with each individual PDF any more. They’re pay what you want, including $0, and you don’t even have to sign up for anything or have any credit card information if you get them for free.

I don’t have an elf dress ready for the next contest, but let’s get it started anyway! I will have it done by next week at the latest, and the winner can decide on the coloring then. I promise it’ll be pretty!

To enter the contest, post a comment with your favorite time period for clothes. One comment per person please, and I’ll choose the winner with a random number generator. If you’ve won a contest this year, please don’t enter again. (And Mom, you’re free to enter!) The winner will get to tell me how to color an elf dress.

18 thoughts on “1930s Blue Flower Patterned Dress with Lace Scarf and Cherry Brooch

  1. My favourite time period for clothing would be Edwardian (around 1900).
    This dress is so cute! I want to make one for myself almost exactly like it :) But then, I want to wear most of your paper doll dresses, Liana.

    Sarah

  2. I love this dress and I like how you filtered it to make it look like colored pencil. I think it’s really beautiful. As for a favorite historical period for dresses, I don’t really know how to pick just one. I suppose if I had to pick one than I would say the 1870s. Something about the soft bustle period I find really beautiful, though my opinions and mood changes daily or sometimes weekly on the matter.

  3. I’m in the same boat as RLC; too many times to choose from! But if I absolutely had to make a choice, it would be the 1400s.

  4. Hi Liana,
    I have been digging back into your archives, and I am wondering how I can print out the outfits from “Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique”….Any tips? Thanks!

    1. Ooh, I see what you mean — it looks like the site redesign broke the Boutique dresses. At the moment there’s no good way — at some point I’ll go in and add some direct links, I think, when I have some time. I’m sorry it’s not working right!

  5. I LOVE THE 1930’s! I was so excited when I saw this post. The next doll to go up on our site is a doll with 1930’s dresses. I had a ton of fun scrolling through Pinterest and Google looking at dresses from the 30’s I love that style.

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