Sari Dress-up Day

Many years ago, when MamaT was in graduate school, she lived in a house with 2 kitchens and baths and 6 bedrooms and girls. One of her housemates was from India and wore traditional dress most of the time. She was also MamaT's all time favorite cook and got her addicted to Indian curry dishes. One evening the apartment pulled out Abha's saris and played dress-up, while Abha "dressed up" in western style clothes.

With this history, MamaT has always liked the Sasha Sari dolls, but they are not quite in her budget, so she thought she could make one of her brunettes into a sari doll and picked out some fabric that might make nice saris.

She also found instructions for making and wrapping saris. There is more than one way to correctly wrap a sari. She learned that a human sari is normally 45" (1.14m) by 6 yards (5.5-6m). Scaled down to Sasha size, that is about 9" (23cm) by 48" (1.2m).

You are supposed to have a half-slip to tuck the sari into. MamaT said she was too lazy to sew up a slip that won't be seen, so she used a rubber band instead.

About where the sari makes full circle around her waist, add 5-6 pleats. We hold these in place with a tiny safety pin.

Wrap the sari all the way around the waist one more time, and then throw it over her shoulder.
The Sari Sasha typically wears her sari over her head. It could also be left over her left shoulder, or brought around over her right shoulder, like MamaT and her housemates did. You can use another safety pin to hold the sari in place where you want it.
MamaT made two dragonfly saris and auctioned one off during the festival stay-at-homers raffle a few years ago. Here is the winner, Karen's doll, modeling her prize.
For some years, MamaT has envisioned making sari's for all the dolls, and as our Sasha family has grown, she picked up more bits of fabric to make Saris from, but the task of making us all saris become more and more daunting. One day MamaT's granddaughter found the fabric and wrapped several of us up and made this display.
MamaT decided it was as good a time as any to re-enact the sari dress-up day, even if all the saris weren't neatly sewn up like she planned. At least they were all cut to size. She decided that since there were 6 models in the original Sari dress-up day, just 6 of us would suffice for the Sasha sari dress up day. So here we are!
By the way, since you might wonder, MamaT is the one in green. The Sasha link we will share today is a site in Stockport, England that still has a few Sasha dolls and accessories for sale. ABCeta Playthings.

http://www.sashadolls.com/