Most girls begin dressmaking very early; that is to say, when they clothe their dolls: and very good practice it is. When their mother gives them a remnant of print, and they turn it about, and measure it to ascertain whether there is enough for a frock, and if there is not enough for a frock, determine whether it shall be a petticoat or a pinafore, and cut it out accordingly,--all this is practice in dressmaking. When the doll is bidden to lie very still to be fitted, and when she is laid sometimes on her face, sometimes on her back, and sometimes held with her head downward, while a paper pattern of her waist is being cut,--all this is practice in dressmaking. The practice will be all the better if the mother can spare a minute to look on, and point out that the front of the body may, if convenient, be cut on the cross, but that the backs and arm pieces must be straightwise of the cotton; and if she can just show how far back the join of the sleeve should go, and how the skirt should be a little taken up in front, that it may sit well, and not hang lower before than behind. It will be kind in the mother, too, not to allow bad work in a doll’s dress, any more than in her own gowns. If you have had a mother or a schoolmistress who let you dress a doll, and made you do it neatly, you have had as good an introduction to your future business as you could desire. From making your doll’s frocks, your next step was, probably, to make your own. Your first attempt, perhaps, was to run the seams of the skirt of your cotton frock,--to run the selvage seams with a backstitch, and, in case of a gore or half-breadth, to make a hem with the selvage over the cut edge. If you puckered it in the least, I hope you were made to take it out and do it again, taking care to pin the edges together at short distances the whole length, that you might not find, when you came to the bottom, that one breadth gave you an inch or two over the other. Some few things about making a skirt should have been explained to you at the beginning--things which are true about the making of all skirts, through every change of fashion, and whether the dress be of the coarsest stuff or the richest satin. These are-- 1st. That you should pin or tack together the breadths of the skirt at the top, before you begin, so that you may not chance to put in more gores on one side than the other (if there are gores), or find that the hind-breadth comes to one side. 2dly. That you should, while thus arranging the breadths, look very carefully that no one breadth is turned wrongside out, if there are two sides; or, if figured, with the pattern upside down. 3dly. That, as the uppermost edge takes up the most, as your work lies over your finger, and as the cut edge stretches more than the selvage, you should, as beforementioned, pin from top to bottom, before you begin to join them, the breadths on which you are employed. This is the surest way of avoiding puckering.