Thanks to the simplicity of the pattern which the Club had adopted for its own they were enabled to make a large number of gay garments in a wonderfully short time. From several further donations of material they made wrappers for children of fourteen, twelve, ten, down to the babies, adding to each a belt of the same color as the band so that the garments might serve as dresses at a pinch. They found that with the smaller sizes they could cut off a narrow band from the width of the cloth at each side, and that served as trimming for another garment of contrasting color.
When they had constructed a goodly pile of long wrappers they fell upon the short sacques, and before many days passed a mound of pink-banded blue and blue-banded pink, and red-banded white and white-banded red rose beside their machines. Della wrote that she was using her mother's machine and was learning how better and better every day. Thanks to their lessons at Chautauqua Margaret and Helen sewed well on the machine already. Ethel Brown and Ethel Blue and Dorothy basted on the bands and the belts and added the fastenings. It was their fingers, too, that feather-stitched and cat-stitched the petticoats that came into being with another donation of flannelette. Dorothy was glad when any new material was cotton as every yard that they used helped the South to rid itself of its unsold crop.
"Ladies are going to wear cotton dresses all winter, they say," she told the Club at one of its meetings. "Mother is going to let me have all my new dresses made of cotton stuff and she's going to have some herself."
"We wear cotton middies all winter," protested the Ethels who felt as if Dorothy felt that they were not doing their share to help on the cause she was interested in.
"When Aunt Marion gets your new dancing school dresses couldn't you ask her to get cotton ones?"
"I suppose we could. Do you think they'd be pretty enough?"
"Some cotton dresses that are going to be worn on the opening night of the opera at the Metropolitan are to be on exhibition in New York in a week or two."
"If cotton is good enough for that purpose I guess it's good enough for your dancing class," laughed Helen.
"Mother says they make perfectly beautiful cottons now of exquisite colors and lovely designs. Don't you think it would be great if we set the fashion of the dancing class?"
"Let's do it. Mother says silk isn't appropriate for girls of our age, anyway."