Sears catalogs

Remember the old Sears Roebuck & Co. catalogs?

When a new catalog arrived, the older one became available for play. My sister and I used to make paper dolls by cutting out the images of people, and then cutting out clothing to fit the figures.

Fall 1950

1954

I recently wrote a column about making paper dolls from Sears catalogs.
 It was a fun indoor pastime on a cold or rainy day.

Fall 1950

We had to be careful, as we cut around the clothing, to leave excess paper for tabs at strategic locations. Those tabs were necessary to hold the clothing onto the paper dolls.

I don't think we ever purchased ready-made paper dolls.  Today I discovered a website that celebrates the art and fashion of paper dolls.   See http://www.opdag.com/index.html

Obviously some people collect and value old paper dolls.  The ones we made were not very special, and we didn't keep them very long. We just had fun creating them and playing with them for a while.